Social networks, self-denial, and median preferences: Conformity as an evolutionary strategy
Jonathan Klicka,∗, Francesco Parisib
a Florida State University, 425 West Jefferson Street, Tallahassee FL 32306-1601, USA b University of Minnesota, MN, USA
Abstract
Attitudesofconformitycanbeunderstoodasaproductofadaptation.Existingmodelsofconformityinvokepreferencefalsification with individuals hiding their true preferences. We posit an adaptive mechanism for conformity. Because non-conformity leads to costs as a dissenting individual is shut out of social networks and majority coalitions, individuals have an incentive to sublimate their original preferences to a meta-preference for conformity. However, this adaptation is not costless. Resisting original preferences imposesself-denialcoststhatmayexceedthebenefitsofconforming.Further,aconformingindividualforegoesthesmallprobability that his first-best original preferences will be realized. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
JEL classification: K10; D70
Keywords: Conformism; Endogenous preferences; Social networks; Preference falsification
1. Introduction
The private benefits of conformity have been recognized by a number of economists. Broadly speaking, two sources of conformist behavior have been identified in the economics literature. In the work on herd-behavior, conformity is the result of economizing on information, rather than any preference for conformity per se (e.g., Banerjee, 1992 ; Bikhchandani et al., 1992). Work on conformity and social institutions stresses status concerns or the cost of social stigma as the source of conformist behavior (e.g., Bernheim, 1994; Kuran, 1995). In this line of work, individuals are assumed to falsify their underlying preferences in order to improve their standing in their social groups.
Herd-behavior and cascade models of choice provide an information-based explanation of conformism. We provide an alternative explanation of conformism that is more closely related to the preference falsification models than it is to the information models. However, we do not envision conformists as falsifying their individual preferences so much as tempering or retraining their individual preferences in order to fulfill a more deeply ingrained meta-preference or value for conformity. Given the social and political benefits that accrue to conformity, it is plausible that humans have evolved such a meta-preference for conformity and attendant mechanisms for preference modification.
Drawingonthepsychologicalliteratureregardinghedonicadaptation,wepresentamodelinwhichindividualsadapt their effective preferences to the consensus positions of their social groups. With “preference adaptation” individuals change their inherent preferences. By modifying their tastes, individuals decrease their disutility from the consumption
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 850 644 5714; fax: +1 850 644 5487. E-mail address: jklick@law.fsu.edu (J. Klick).
1053-5357/$ – see front matter © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016 /j.socec. 2007.08.008
of a bad, perhaps even adapting their taste to the point of transforming a dislike into a preference for something they did not originally care for. To the contrary, with preference falsification, individuals do not change their underlying preferences but undertake actions that run counter to their preferences, inducing others to believe that they hold preferences that are consistent with the undertaken action.
In a social context, the adaptation process can be rational since conformity increases the individual’s embeddedness or security in his social networks. Conforming to the prevailing preferences of the group thus generates significant benefits. Also in the political sphere, conformity yields potential benefits. Given the structural advantage enjoyed by those with median preferences, adaptive conformity increases the expected utility of political participants. While scholars advancing preference falsification theories of conformity recognize the benefits of appearing to conform, they generally ignore the psychological adaptation that can take place to mitigate the personal costs of falsification.
Work on hedonic adaptation and desensitization in the psychology literature suggests that individuals, in many situations, become accustomed to negative stimuli through repeated exposure. This adaptive mechanism allows the individual to experience subsequent exposures to the negative stimuli as affectively neutral unless the intensity of the stimuli exceeds the adaptation level. In economic terms, the process of adaptation changes inherent preferences such that the disutility arising from the consumption of a bad decreases through repeated exposure. Although not directly discussed in the hedonic adaptation literature, a reasonable extrapolation might suggest that individuals can actually modify their tastes, perhaps even adapting a dislike into a preference, through repeated consumption of a good they did not originally care for.
In general, there would be no cause to undertake this modification of preferences for an isolated individual allowed to choose freely among alternative goods corresponding to his original taste. However, if access to or enjoyment of a given social network is conditioned on exhibiting certain preferences and the costs of falsification are higher than the costs of adaptation, individuals will have an incentive to invest in preference modification. They will exhibit a taste for real (as opposed to falsified) conformity.
Self-denial and internalization of external values and norms are ways through which individuals adapt their preferences. There is likely to be heterogeneity in the ability of individuals to adapt their preferences or, put differently, individuals will differ in their self-denial and internalization costs. We can think of these differences as differences in the meta-preference for conformity. We operationalize this notion by including self-denial costs in the adaptation process. However, given the social benefits to conformity, we speculate that conformity meta-preferences are themselves subject to evolutionary selection increasing the fitness of individuals with lower self-denial costs.
In Section 2 of this paper, we review the existing economic literature on conformity, focusing on the preference falsificationvariant,highlightingitsfailuretoconsidertheadaptivemechanismsindividualsemploytoconformwithout resorting to continual falsification. Section 3 discusses the psychological literature regarding hedonic adaptation, and Section 4 uses the insights of hedonic adaptation to suggest a preference adaptation model of conformity. Section 5 offers a discussion of how preference adaptation might be distinguished from preference falsification empirically, and Section 6 concludes.
2. Preference falsification and adaptation
Economic models of conformity, aside from those invoking information cascades and herd-behavior, suggest that individuals pretend to share the preferences and beliefs of a particular social group in order to gain some benefit and/or to avoid punishment for being different. Conforming individuals are thought to falsify their inherent preferences when they provide signals to members of the social group, acting as if their inherent preferences and the dominant preferences coincide.
In Bernheim’s (1994) article, individuals are assumed to care about status and intrinsic utility. In Bernheim’s signaling model, while status depends upon public perception of an individual’s underlying preferences, the public cannot observe those preferences directly. Instead, the individual’s actions provide information about the underlying preferences. The equilibrium in the signaling game involves apparent conformity when status is sufficiently highly valued relative to intrinsic consumption/activity values in the individual’s utility function. In his framework, individuals trade-off satisfying their intrinsic preferences in order to send signals that imply they hold the preferences that are highly valued by society in order to gain status.
Bernheim justifies his assumption to include status in an individual’s utility function by citing empirical evidence in the psychology literature that individuals directly value status. Also, he argues that evolutionary pressures reinforce the tendency to value status, since more highly regarded individuals will have increased opportunities to reproduce. Social institutions may also evolve to increase the payoff to having preferences for esteem since such preferences may facilitate coordination. Bernheim’s signaling game, however, does not consider the possibility that individuals might actually adapt their underlying preferences. Instead, although he does not use the term, the behavior he describes is essentially what Kuran refers to as “preference falsification,” as an individual undertakes actions that diverge from his intrinsic preferences to induce others to infer that he holds the socially favored preferences.
In Kuran’s work, individuals face pressures to indicate their support for the dominant political positions in their society, regardless of their underlying political beliefs and preferences. Though individuals gain utility from expressing their underlying beliefs and preferences, they also face social costs if they dissent from the dominant position. If the expected costs of revealing private preferences exceed the internal benefits of being truthful, the individual will falsify his preferences. In Kuran’s model, many individuals may hold similar underlying preferences that run counter to the reigning political position, but, because of wide-spread preference falsification, each may be afraid to dissent from the status quo.
Kuran uses this framework to develop a theory of unanticipated revolutions. Specifically, although a given regime might appear to command popular support, the appearance may be the resul