Download Norm Internalization: A Comment on Philip Pettit, Norms

Norm Internalization: A Comment on Philip Pettit, Norms, Commitment and Censure Richard H. McAdams Draft of 3 December 2008 In his contribution to the symposium, Pettit identifies a “norm‐normative gap” in the naturalistic explanation of social norms and supplies an explanation to fill the gap, at least for norms of honesty in communication. In this brief comment, I suggest that there are better ways to bridge the gap that the one Pettit proposes. I. The Norm‐Normative Gap What is the norm‐normative gap? Pettit says that rational choice accounts of norms explain only why it can be prudent to conform to norms, but not “how some norms come to assume [] a normative status in the minds of those who uphold them” (p.1). Put differently, the naturalistic explanation does not identify the mechanism by which individuals shift from an external perspective – that it is rational to follow the norm given the costs others will impose on norm violators – to an internal perspective – that conformity is something one “ought” to do for its own sake. Pettit says that “[i]f norms have a normative status” then they must engage the normative counterparts of compliance and enforcement, which are “commitment” and “censure.” “The problem raised by” a norm with a normative status “is that there is a gap between what it requires, on pain of penalty, and what is normatively required, on pain of censure” (p.2). To clarify Pettit’s norm‐normative gap, it will perhaps help to describe what it is not. Elsewhere, I have contended that much of the game theory literature on norms commonly makes a mistake that is similar in some ways to Pettit’s norm‐normative gap. McAdams & Rasmusen (2007). That literature equates norms with a behavioral equilibrium (of a certain type) that emerges from the strategic interaction of rational individuals. In a Nash equilibrium, each individual chooses a behavioral strategy that is his or her best response to what everyone else does. To be in equilibrium does not require that anyone have any positive or negative attitude about what anyone else does. The starkest example of this analysis is agent‐based computer modeling, where the simple inhuman “agents” lack even the capacity for having attitudes. As a result, despite the claims this literature makes, it addresses behavioral regularities (perhaps conventions) that are not norms even in Pettit’s expansive definition (p.4), which I accept. His definition requires that, to qualify as a norm, a behavioral regularity “cannot be a matter of [open] indifference” but compliance with the regularity “must be expected to attract approval or non‐compliance disapproval” (p.3). Yet much game theory of “norms” ignores this essential ingredient. We might call this omission the regularity‐norm gap. By contrast, Pettit’s norm‐normative gap exists even in theory that makes normative attitudes essential, at least if the role those attitudes play is external rather than internal. Pettit and I have in common that we have emphasized the role of esteem in explaining norms. See Pettit (1990); McAdams (1997). Because people desire esteem, they care about attitudes of approval and disapproval. Those attitudes determine the allocation of esteem and therefore create incentives for behavior; those incentives can then support a behavioral regularity. A behavioral regularity supported in part by attitudes approving conformity (or disapproving non‐conformity) is a norm. But Pettit seems now to be saying that his and my esteem theories are examples of naturalistic theories of norms that are subject to the norm‐normative gap. Even a theory that gives an essential role to normative attitudes (approval or disapproval) does not bridge the norm‐normative gap. i
If I understand Pettit correctly, normative attitudes are insufficient because they are external rather than internal. In the esteem theories, people have normative attitudes only about other people’s behavior, not their own. Because I care about esteem, I care about your normative attitudes. If you will withhold esteem from me for, say, the behavior of lying, then I have an incentive not to lie. If enough others will withhold esteem, the incentive may be strong enough to induce me not to lie. But I will abstain from lying merely because it will be prudent to avoid the behavior as a means of avoiding disapproval (and all that may entail). At no point in this esteem story do I believe that I “ought” to avoid lying. A final way to restate the gap at issue is to borrow terminology from Robert Ellickson (1991) who speaks of first‐party, second‐party, and third‐party sanctions enforcing norms. Second‐party enforcement involves the “victim” of a norms violation sanctioning the violator. 2 Third‐party enforcement refers to enforcement by someone other than the victim or violator. First‐party enforcement is then “self‐sanctioning,” as where a person who has internalized a norm feels guilt from the knowledge that he has violated it. As I understand it, Pettit’s point is that naturalistic explanations account for second‐ and third‐party enforcement, but not first‐
party enforcement. II. Two General and Alternative Solutions Pettit does not claim that the only internalized norms involve honesty in communication, but neither does his theory seem easily generalizable to the myriad of other internalized norms. An ideal explanation of the process bridging the norm‐normative gap would be general; it would explain the acquisition of an internal perspective for all internalized norms, without regard to their content. To develop such a theory, one might look to the social sciences. For example, sociology is intensely interested in how people come to acquire identities, to perceive social arrangements as legitimate, and in general to internalize norms. Developmental psychology seeks to explain the process of internalization in children. Social and organizational psychology looks at how adults come to internalize the values of their groups, as where adults acquire a professional, religious, or criminal identity. I will not attempt to review these extensive literatures, but use them obliquely to offer two brief and parsimonious accounts of why and how norms are internalized. Both mechanisms involve the power of consistency: (1) the rational demands of attitudinal consistency and (2) the motivated demands of cognitive dissonance. First, the mechanisms underlying externally directed normative attitudes make it likely that norms will be internalized. Consider the psychology implicit in the existence of a norm, which, as Pettit defines it, exists only when a behavioral regularity is supported, in part, by approval of conformity and/or disapproval of non‐conformity. Obviously, as the work on esteem emphasizes, the approval pattern is itself an incentive only because human beings value the good opinion of others intrinsically (as well as instrumentally). But the presence of a norm also means, conversely, that human beings have the capacity and inclination to form attitudes of approval and disapproval. Developing such attitudes requires that one hold to some criteria of 3 assessing others or the behavior of others. One grants esteem to another because, say, she satisfies the criterion of being honest; one disapproves a person because, say, he fails the criterion of being thoughtful. Finally, as Pettit observes, this granting or withholding of esteem is not an intentional act; one cannot promise to provide esteem, any more than one can promise to provide “friendship or love or trust.” Once one acquires the information that shows someone to satisfy or fail the criteria of assessment, the esteem judgment itself occurs unintentionally. I should note one more condition about the criteria of assessment. Approval and disapproval would have little effect on behavior if the criteria of assessment were random or ephemeral. To select behavior for the purpose of gaining esteem, one needs to be able to predict how an individual or a collection of individuals will react to a given behavior, which requires some stability and internal consistency in the criteria of assessment. Some scholars have sought to explain how certain patterns of approval arise, which I use merely to illustrate how stable criteria of assessment might exist. Sugden (1998: 81) posits “that it is part of normal human psychology for us to feel resentment against individuals whose acts are both contrary to our expectations and contrary to our interests – particularly if we believe that those individuals knew their acts would have those properties.” Simple self‐interest leads an individual to disapprove of unexpected behavior that that harms the individual (which is frequently true of behavior with substantial negative externalities); conversely, an individual tends to approve of expected behavior that benefits the individual (as will frequently be true of behavior that generates positive externalities). See also Lewis (1969: 99‐100); Pettit (1990: 734). Implicit in this point is the existence and stability of these criteria of assessment: expected or unexpected, beneficial or harmful. Now consider a conjecture. Over time, naturalistic norms become internalized because it is difficult to resist applying one’s criteria for assessing the behavior of others to one’s own behavior. Pettit notes the power of consistency: “Consistency is a requirement of self‐
representation to which no one can be [openly] indifferent” (pp.15‐16). If one disapproves others for dishonesty or littering, then it will be difficult to avoid disapproving of oneself for the same behaviors. One might like to grant oneself an exception, but the judgment is not an intentional act. The psychology of esteem plus the power of consistency creates the conditions 4 in which it is likely that one judges oneself harshly for failing to live up to the standards on which one grants approval or disapproval to others. I take it that this sort of self‐appraisal is tantamount to taking the internal perspective on the norm. There is one way to avoid this conclusion. Perhaps one’s sole criterion of assessment is purely egoistic: whether or not an individual’s actions benefit oneself. If and only if your behavior serves my interests, I esteem you. Your lying to me harms my interests and so induces me to disapprove of you. My lying to you, however, might very well serve my interests, and so I do not disapprove of myself. Because of this possibility, I will not claim that there is anything inevitable about the transition from naturalized norms to internalized ones. But the nakedly egoistic way of thinking is, I think, sufficiently rare that the transition is a common one. As a second mechanism, consider the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. See Cooper (2007); Egan, Santos & Bloom (2007). This well‐known theory is also about cognitive consistency, but unlike the prior point, the consistency here includes at least one motivated belief. People are motivated to maintain a certain self‐image, such as being a nice or good person. They distort other beliefs to maintain such motivated beliefs, so the consistency works in a different way than is the case for pure rationality. To give occasion for dissonance, let us posit a simple notion for what it means to be a good or decent person. It is that good people are intrinsically motivated to do the right thing. As Pettit says: “[T]o count as decent . . . people will have to conform to norms of decency because they ought to conform, not just because it is rational for them to do so” (p.1). Why might people regard being intrinsically motivated as superior to being only externally motivated? The simple answer is that those who take the internal perspective – perhaps for the reasons of rational consistency just discussed – will more reliably obey a norm. Individuals who have internalized a norm may comply with it even when they have no reason to suspect their compliance could ever be observed, while those who have not internalized the norm will comply only when they expect they may be observed. If one has a criterion of assessment that favors adhering to a behavioral regularity, one will approve more strongly of those who are more reliable in their conformity – the good people who internalize the norms – than those who are less reliable – the Holmesian bad people who obey merely to avoid external sanctions. Across various norms, we 5 can then say that one earns the extra esteem of being a good person by being perceived as one who has internalized the relevant norms. A purely rational actor might observe his own behavior complying with norms and conclude that it is determined entirely by the sanctions that others would otherwise impose on him. He knows he is not a “good person,” though he hopes other people will think that he is. But a person subject to cognitive dissonance will resist the inference that he is not a good person. He is motivated to represent his norm compliance to himself as being intrinsic, based on his commitment to the norm. If he complies with the norm of honesty, he incurs dissonance between his behavior of honesty and his internal indifference to his own honesty. He resolves the dissonance by adopting the internal perspective: I am honest because I ought to be honest. That allows him to think of himself as a good person. From my anecdotal observation, this process is common. For example, American lawyers and politicians seem constantly to emphasize their “public service” as if it would be insulting to suggest that they were motivated merely by the status, power, and wealth their job provides. Nor is the point limited to this particular dissonance. Imagine the plight of the Holmesian bad person who complies with norms only for external reasons but who seeks to create the impression that he has internalized the norm. How does one convincingly mimic a person who has adopted the internal perspective on a norm across a wide variety of unpredictable contexts? The mimicry is particularly difficult if one wants to fool social or business partners one interacts with frequently. The best strategy may be to provisionally adopt the internal view – to test it out. If one wants to blush or appear angry at the right moment, or to reflexively make the right remark, then one needs to dive into the role of a good person as would a method actor. For most people, however, it is difficult to play a role for a long time without adopting the values of the person one pretends to be. The legal scholar Jacqueline Ross (2005) notes the problem this psychological transition poses for long‐term undercover police agents (what she terms the “Donnie Brasco” problem after a particular cinematic example): undercover agents who spend years pretending to be a loyal member of a criminal organization start to identify with members of the infiltrated groups and to internalize their values. To avoid constant dissonance, the agents become the people they pretend to be. 6 Either theory – rational consistency or cognitive dissonance – explains how and why people internalize naturalistic norms. External incentives cause individuals to practice a norm – to obey and enforce it – and to pretend to internalize it. With enough time that practice and pretense causes them to internalize the norm. Under this account, the real issue is not why people internalize norms but why they sometimes fail to internalize a norm, even though they practice it for a considerable time. I am comfortable with this reversal of the question because my observation, admittedly casual and anecdotal, is that people routinely internalize those norms they practice over a period of time, even when those norms are socially unproductive or pathological. There are exceptions, of course. As Timur Kuran (1995) observes, the norm in many Soviet bloc nations before 1991 was to speak publicly only in support of the government, but this norm was clearly not internalized, as it evaporated instantly when political events removed the external costs from openly criticizing the government. On my first theory, rational consistency, one would not expect individuals to internalize the norm because they did not themselves hold criteria of assessment approving others for conforming to it (even if they pretended to). On the second theory, cognitive dissonance, perhaps the extreme cost of public dissent in repressive regimes allowed people to reconcile their silence with their positive self‐image – only saints would endure those costs. And perhaps one could preserve one’s inner contempt for the state by combining perfunctory public expressions of allegiance with private dissent (to a close family member or friend). In any case, I think we might gain more insight by seeking to explain the exceptional cases of non‐internalization against the background assumption that internalization is common. III. The Pettit Solution Pettit offers to explain norm internalization in a particular context: norms of honest communication. Assuming the creation of a naturalistic norm of honest communication, Pettit’s key move is to introduce excuse. Pettit says that “excuse may not be strictly definable on the basis of the naturalistic concepts” (p.13), yet “[t]he concept of an excuse, and the practice of invoking excuses, is bound to have a place under any norm of honesty” (p.14). The appearance of excuse inevitably leads to the practice of commitment and censure that he associates with the 7 internal perspective on norms. When one makes a statement that foregoes the possibility of excuse, one commits to the statement. The punishment that results from a violation of the commitment is one that will commonly be recognized as earned or merited – as something the punisher has a right to inflict. That is censure. For two reasons, I question Pettit’s optimism about the inevitability of an internal form of commitment and censure. First, I do not believe that the concept of excuse necessarily emerges from a naturalistic norm of honest communication. Pettit imagines that the naturalistic norm of honesty arises in an iterated prisoners’ dilemma from some kind of conditional cooperation, such as the strategy tit‐for‐tat. Each party is honest in his communications only because he fears that dishonesty, at least when discovered, will induce retaliation (as by retaliatory dishonesty, a refusal to engage in exchange, or some other sanction). This is plausible, but let us pay greater attention to the set up for conditional cooperation because I think it shows a way that excuses are not necessary. One can dispense with the concept of excuse by re‐defining the behavior the norm requires. In a real world prisoners’ dilemma, there is frequently more than one way to “cooperate” (and because defection is any move besides cooperation, there is more than one way to “defect”). See McAdams (2008). This is an easy point to miss in the context of abstract prisoners’ dilemmas, like the ones used in computer tournaments, because they simply define two possible moves, one being cooperation and the other defection. But frequently, there are many possible behavioral moves, and one might draw the line between cooperation and defection in more than one place. To sustain conditional cooperation, it will be necessary that the parties draw the line in the same place – that they coordinate on how to cooperate. Otherwise, there will eventually arise a case where one party plays what it thinks is a cooperative move, but which the other party views as defection. The latter party’s retaliatory defection is one that the target will understand as an initial defection, requiring it to reciprocate with defection. The result is a spiral of defection that causes cooperation to unravel. Now let’s apply this point to the context of communication. In an iterated prisoners’ dilemma involving communication, there are at least two ways to define cooperation: (1) true communication or (2) sincere communication. There is no reason the latter cannot form the basis 8 of a cooperative equilibrium in an iterated game. Under this definition, if the party speaks sincerely, that counts as cooperation regardless of whether the content is otherwise false. Having cooperated, the party who speaks sincerely but falsely requires no excuse. There is, of course, a need for evidence to determine whether the false statement was sincere, and that evidence may be hard to come by in some cases. But the naturalistic explanation of the norm does not logically entail excuse, and Pettit’s claim does not inevitably follow. Pettit is still correct that a speaker might sometimes want to commit himself to true communication, rather than just sincere communication. But I don’t see how this commitment entails an internal perspective on the norm. This is my second objection: the decision to make oneself vulnerable to sanctions for speaking falsely, even though one could avoid such sanctions, can be given a naturalistic explanation. For purely instrumental reasons, an individual may seek to “commit” himself to the truth of his assertions. In the commercial context, this kind of commitment is a “warranty.” A new seller wants to convince a potential buyer to buy the seller’s goods. The seller claims that the goods have high quality, but the buyer is not persuaded merely by the seller’s sincerity. The seller may be sincere but wrong in thinking his goods are of high quality. Indeed, the seller of goods is likely to be particularly biased about their quality, so the sincerity of his belief is not especially convincing. For this reason, the seller offers something stronger that he is not obligated to provide: a warranty. As in: “I warrant that the goods are of high quality and if they are not, I will have breached my warranty and you (the buyer) will have special remedies against me.” By giving these additional remedies, beyond what would be provided in the absence of a warranty, the warranty induces a sale where mere sincerity would not. The choice to bind oneself with a warranty, however, is not an example of norm internalization because it is entirely explicable by external incentives. The seller sees the instrumental value of making the commitment – it increases sales. The seller need harbor no internal perspective that he “ought” to make or honor the commitment. If he could get the sale without the commitment or maximize his profits by making but dishonoring the commitment, he would see no reason not to. 9 Thus, while I think Pettit traces out a plausible scenario whereby a particular naturalistic norm becomes internalized, I do not see it as an inevitable result. There is no necessity for excuses and no necessity that foregoing excuses involves taking an internal perspective on the obligation to be honest. Conclusion Pettit identifies an important problem – the norm‐normative gap. I believe, however, that there are more general solutions than the one he proposes and that his solution is plausible but not inevitable as he claims. References Cooper, J. (2007), COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: 50 YEARS OF A CLASSIC THEORY, London: Sage Publications Ltd. Egan, L.C., L.R. Santos, & P. Bloom (2007), “The Origins of Cognitive Dissonance: Evidence From Children and Monkeys,” Psychological Science 18(11), 978‐83. Ellickson, R.C. (1991), ORDER WITHOUT LAW: HOW NEIGHBORS SETTLE DISPUTES, Cambridge, Harvard University Press. Kuran, T. (1995), PRIVATE TRUTHS, PUBLIC LIES: THE SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF PREFERENCE FALSIFICATION, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Lewis, D. (1969), CONVENTION, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. McAdams, R.H. (1997), “The Origin, Development, and Regulation of Norms,” Michigan Law Review 96(2): 338‐433. McAdams, R.H. and E. Rasmusen (2007), “Norms and the Law,” in A.M. Polinsky & S.M. Shavell (eds.), THE HANDBOOK OF LAW AND ECONOMICS 1573‐1618 (Elsevier Science). Pettit, P. (1990), “Virtus Normativa: Rational Choice Perspectives,” Ethics 100: 725‐55; reprinted in P. Pettit 2002 RULES, REASONS, AND NORMS, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Ross, J.E. (2005), “Dilemmas of Undercover Policing in Germany: The Troubled Quest for Legitimacy” (unpublished manuscript on file with author) Sugden, R. (1998), “Normative Expectations: The Simultaneous Evolution of Institutions and Norms,” in ECONOMICS, VALUES, AND ORGANIZATION 73‐100 (A. Ben‐Ner & L. Putterman, eds.), Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. I also think it plain that Pettit does not mean the norm‐normative gap to refer to the difference in behavior (or an attitudinal pattern) and a true moral evaluation of behavior. i
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