Public lecture by Dr. Matthew Gervais

 

Social norms are among the most theorized and studied phenomena across the human sciences. And for good reason--they are both the descriptive patterns of human social behaviour and the social expectations that compel adherence to such patterns. Yet for all their prominence and uses, a satisfying and unifying account of social norm learning and enforcement has remained elusive. Recently, evolution-minded scholars have turned to trying to unpack the black box of "norm psychology". This talk builds on these efforts by extending a novel model of the evolved structure of social affect to consider how social norms may emerge from the uniquely human sentiment respect.