Very often, we find ourselves in a conflict situation - a conflict between our personal (and often, primeval) desires and social norms. By the very fact that 'norms' need to be enforced through a variety of legal rules, religious beliefs and psychological conditioning, it is obvious that breaking these norms would be the more obvious thing to do in the absence of such norms. I sometimes feel amazed at the superstructure of social norms that we have built for ourselves. To me, it is quite surely man's greatest creation. Everything else - including finance and technology (arguably two of the greatest inventions of the last century) - could not have been possible unless we got together as a society and built these norms that could sustain cooperation.
Some of the basic ideas of this short article are from a chapter in our course in Development Economics (which most of us decided to skip for the exams, though). The idea is simple - if we as humans did not coordinate (and by coordinate I encompass things such as trust and cooperation), then even basic activities would be impossible. Take even a simple barter economy. You make handicrafts and sell it for food. What forces you to ensure that you are exchanging good quality handicrafts? Once you get the food, even if the handicrafts turn out to be of poor quality, you have already made whatever gains you needed to. However, we observe adherence to a certain quality in our society. This is caused due to the repeated nature of the interaction. If I do not supply good quality handicrafts, then very few farmers would be willing to exchange their food in the future.
Take something more private. Why should we be kind to others? Here I am not considering the 'feel good' associated with being kind. Often, the 'feel good' is a part of our psychological conditioning, and is in no way 'good' by itself. However, we would, generally speaking, still find it in our interest to be kind, because of the hope of reciprocity. If I am kind to people today, they would be kind to me tomorrow, and that would be beneficial to me. Similarly, faithfulness. If there was no stigma attached to not being faithful in relationships, then our primeval urges would take over. In this case, I do not quite see why human society would find faithfulness as a useful virtue. Probably a bit more thinking would make it obvious.
Now when you come to think of it, every type of human society, and every activity in human society, is based on such social norms. It is exactly like a repeated form game. The Nash equilibrium in any one game might be for all players to do the socially imperfect action. However, because human society is based on repeated interactions, we are able to sustain socially optimal outcomes even when there is an incentive for individual players to renege.
Take a simple example - driving. Consider that a driver has to actions - follow traffic rules and don't follow traffic rules. If all other players are following traffic rules, then your not following traffic rules doesn't make a difference and hence it is in your interest to not follow traffic rules. In case all other players are not following traffic rules, you would be stupid to be following traffic rules. Abstracting away from the intermediate outcomes where some people follow rules and some don't, we find that it is in every player's interest to not follow traffic rules (in the language of game theory, a dominant strategy). However, the outcome where nobody follows traffic rules is socially imperfect. Hence, we have a system of rules and fines that make it optimal for every individual player to follow traffic rules. This is the only way that the social optimal can be sustained.
Think about it - where would we be if socially optimal outcomes could not be sustained? The need to make coordination optimal has made humans create such an elaborate system of norms. In one word, it is simply mind-boggling.
A natural corollary of what I have argued, and one that I do not always agree with, is religion. Religion is probably the greatest of these social norms that has survived centuries. What is religion but a means to ensure that all of us behave a certain way? Is it not religion that is the last-ditch effort to ensure that we place an intrinsic value on traits such as truthfulness, honesty etc that are otherwise only functionally important? At this stage, I would leave this argument as such and leave it to the readers to think about it.
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