The neuroscience of conventions and norms

Our social life consists mostly of coordination problems, where we must converge on choices and strategies that will benefit all parties involved. When a solution becomes widely and repeatedly adopted, it becomes a "social convention" in a certain group or population. This project carries out the first investigation of the neural basis of the emergence and consolidation of conventions. In particular, it studies whether (and if so, how) conventions have the tendency to evolve into norms that individuals prefer not to breach. One hypothesis is that as conventions become repeated the "social pain" associated with breaching them increases to the point where it can outweigh possible benefits to the individual associated with breaking these social rules. This idea can be tested by measuring brain activity using the technique of functional magnetic resonance imaging while volunteers play a simple coordination game. The hypothesis predicts activities in brain regions which have previously been shown to respond to rewards and social disgust, dependent upon the extent to which conventions have become established over multiple rounds of the game.