Conformity to inegalitarian conventions and norms: the contribution of coordination and esteem.

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Conformity to inegalitarian conventions and norms: the contribution of coordination and esteem.

Conformity is a large topic and its causes are undoubtedly heterogenous. Of the various mechanisms that contribute to conformity, I will comment on two: coordination and esteem. Game theorists have given coordination significant attention. Lewis (1969) first posited that social conventions are, roughly, particular equilibrium outcomes to recurrent coordination problems. Once the equilibrium occurs, it is, by definition, in everyone's interest to conform. Evolutionary game theorists have explored the conditions that make a certain equilibrium likely to emerge and persist when more than one equilibrium is possible (see Sugden 1986, Skyrms 1996, Young 1998). In the first section below, I set forth one point about the nature of conformity in such settings--that there can be a strong stability to conventions in which the required behavior varies by the observable physical differences among human beings, such as sex and those that come to be associated with race. In a certain class of important games, observable personal differences work to "break symmetry," which significantly changes the possible outcomes to the game. My aim is not to provide a particular model of conformity involving sex and race, but to illustrate the usefulness of a particular approach to model-building.

Less studied is a second mechanism of conformity: the desire for "esteem," i.e., the intrinsic (rather than instrumental) concern for one's reputation. In the second section below, I explain the claim that human beings desire the esteem of others. I then discuss how this simple preference can produce significant conformity. Strong patterns of (expressed or unexpressed) approval and disapproval create new incentives for behavior. These attitudinal patterns can themselves create behavioral patterns or, more commonly, provide a new incentive for complying with existing behavioral patterns, which may arise through various processes including coordination. Again, I do not offer a particular model, but rather describe some of the implications of the simple assumption that individuals intrinsically care what other think of them. As with coordination, one implication is that esteem-seeking among strangers is likely to make behaviorally relevant the distinctions among individuals that even a stranger will know, i.e., observable physical traits, including sex and race.

In both cases--coordination and esteem--I emphasize some unattractive (inegalitarian and illiberal) types of conformity. Though the same mechanisms also produce some desirable forms of social order, I seek to balance the optimism of the existing literature.

I. Coordination: "Breaking Symmetry" with Observable Personal Traits

Ullmann-Margalit (1977:134-97) proposed that coo...

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