Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-2022
DOI
10.3390/systems10050143
Publication Title
Systems
Volume
10
Issue
5
Pages
143 (1-28 pp.)
Abstract
We usually hope that social norms discourage injustice. However, we are all witnesses to harmful norms enforced by governments, such as xenophobia, which need to be contested and changed. Previous studies have concluded that it is possible to change a harmful norm through contestation by powerless actors if suitable structural conditions exist. However, these structural conditions have not been sufficiently studied and, as such, are the focus of this paper. Our paper begins with a review of well-established micro-level theories of social identity theory (SIT), recast as a set of 42 discrete theoretical statements. These statements are then re-expressed in the form of a systems-level theory of macro-changes in societal norms using the system dynamics approach. The over-time dynamic behavior simulated using this structure is compared to events in two well-known case studies of changes in societal norms: women’s suffrage between 1830 and 1920, and the emergence of more tolerant lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) norms in the US between 1950 and 2018. Further simulations of the model explore the roles of anger and social outrage, foreshadowing the ability of simulation-based experiments, such as the one presented here, to explore in a robust way a wide range of (undemocratic) regimes under counter-factual conditions.
ORCID
0000-0003-3616-2012 (Salimi), 0000-0002-5420-0521 (Richman)
Original Publication Citation
Salimi, K., Richman, J. T., Karp, R., Richardson, G. P., & Andersen, D. (2022). Emergence of a norm from resistance: Using simulation to explore the macro implications of social identity theory. Systems, 10(5), Article 143. https://doi.org/10.3390/systems10050143
Repository Citation
Salimi, Khadijeh; Richman, Jesse T.; Karp, Regina; Richardson, George P.; and Anderson, David, "Emergence of a Norm from Resistance: Using Simulation to Explore the Macro Implications of Social Identity Theory" (2022). Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications. 49.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/politicalscience_geography_pubs/49
Comments
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).