A cognitive framing for norm change

Abstract

Norms are within minds and out of minds; they work thanks to their mental implementation but also thanks to their externalized supports, processing, diffusion, and behavioral messages. This is the normal and normative working of Ns. Ns is not simply a behavioral and collective fact, ʼnormality’ or an institution; but they necessarily are mental artifacts. Ns change follows the same circuit. In principle there are two (interconnected) loci of change with their forces: mental transformations vs. external, interactive ones. Ns change is a circular process based on a loop between ‘emergence’ and ‘immergence’; that is, changes in behaviors presuppose some change in the mind, while behaviors causal efficacy is due to their aggregated macro-result: acts that organize in stable choreographies and regularities build (new) Ns in the minds of the actors. More precisely the problem is: which are the crucial mental representations supporting a N conform (or deviating) behavior? And which kinds of ‘mutations’ in those mental representations produce a change in behavior? I will focus my analysis on Social Norms, in a broad sense.