WEEK 13 - USING FORMAL MODELS: CHOICE MODELS
The more
Formal choice models are used to represent subjective
beliefs and values in a concise way. The field is
commonly divided into three domains: decision theory,
social choice theory,  and  game theory.
 Decision theory concerns  the intentional
attitudes and choices of a single person
or agent. This is of intrinsic interest in
psychology and cognitive science. In fact,
decision theory has wide reach as it is a building
block of the other two domains of choice
models as well, which concern groups of agents.
 Social choice theory models a group of agents
who must reconcile their attitudes in order to
act as a single agent with ‘shared’ attitudes
(think of voters who must settle on a choice of
leader); social choice theory is employed in
political science and public economics, amongst
other areas.
 Finally, game theory models strategic
interaction amongst individuals—all choose
their own course of action, but they strategize
because the combination of choices affects the
outcomes of all involved. Game theory is used
extensively in (micro) economics, and
increasingly in sociology and other social
science disciplines.
All of these domains of choice theory—decision, social
choice, and game theory—are also used to explore
normative questions, i.e. questions about how
things should be done, rationally and/or morally
speaking. Philosophers and other normative theorists
appeal to choice theory to answer questions like ‘What
constitutes rational choice attitudes?’ or ‘What group
attitudes justly  represent the attitudes of its constituent
members?’ or ‘How should  public institutions be
designed to deliver adequate outcomes, given the
attitudes that citizens are likely to have and the
strategic behavior they are likely to engage in?’
 Introducing Choice Models for the Social Sciences
A.            Individual Decision Models
The main components of these models
are prospects and preferences. In short, the agent has
preferences over prospects. That is, there are various
‘items’ or ‘states of affairs’ (the prospects) that the
agent compares and ranks in terms of which ones
he/she likes better than others (the preferences).
An extreme yet surprisingly mainstream position,
particularly in economics, is the so-called theory
of revealed preference, which holds that preference
simply is choice, or perhaps choice disposition, rather
than some deeper psychological attitude. In that case,
we cannot look further than a person’s choice behavior
in order to determine their preferences because these
preferences are constituted by the choice behavior and
have no deeper grounding. It follows that decision
models are reduced to mere descriptions of an agent’s
choices, where the probability and utility functions are
just mathematical constructs and not properly
representative of belief and desire at all.
fruitful position is surely that preference is distinct from,
but plays some kind of motivating role with respect to,
choice behavior. As such, choice behavior is still
important evidence for preferences.
 B.      Game Models
Game models are intended to capture the special
situation of strategic inter-action between agents
There are some basic components to the description of
a game. First, there are the players—in the simplest
case, two players. These players have a set of
available acts or strategies, and we ultimately want to
know which of these the players each choose. The rules
or procedures of the game specify the outcomes for
each player, given each possible combination of players’
strategies. Players have preferences over these
outcomes, represented by a utility function that may be
cardinal or ordinal. As already alluded to, the players
may well be entirely self-regarding, but they need not
be. As with individual decisions, in terms of preferences,
agents in a game come in many stripes and colors.
Ideal Type and its Discontents
A.      Standard Decision Theory: Unfalsifiable or Simply
False?
Max Weber (1864– 1920), claimed to be one of the
‘principal architects of modern social science’, started
from a more optimistic position. Weber argued that the
social scientist’s aim, unlike the historian’s, is not to
represent the vagaries in attitudes of some particular
persons, but rather to represent attitudes and behavior
that can be generalized across people and/or across
time and which therefore have explanatory value. To
use Weber’s terminology, the social scientist explains
and predicts on the basis of ideal types.
According to Weber himself, a key ideal type for the
social sciences is the agent who rationally furthers her
own ends, or who, in other words, has rational
preferences over prospects. Weber’s claim then is that,
when studying human behavior and social interaction, it
is useful to depict agents as making choices on the basis
of rational preferences. This assumption is indeed borne
out in the social sciences, and particularly in economics;
while we know that people sometimes act irrationally or
have inconsistent preferences, it is assumed that such
cases of irrational behavior are temporary deviations
that in some sense ‘cancel out’ in large groups or in the
long run.
B.      Game Theory: The Reductionist Critique
Indeed, game theory is paradigmatic of methodological
individualism, a term first used to describe the
Weberian program of explaining group-level
phenomena in terms of the attitudes and behavior of
the individuals who constitute the relevant groups. It is
a form of explanation whereby groups are reduced to
their constituent individuals. More generally, the
existing social and institutional arrangements act as
constraints on individuals, and play a corresponding role
in game models. Beyond the agents’ preferences, the
prevailing social setting determines what strategies are
actually available to agents, and the sorts of outcomes
that result from combinations of strategy choices.
Concluding Remarks
One major conclusion to draw from this chapter is that
we should not ask whether choice models, in general,
are true/false or unfalsifiable in the social sciences, but
rather whether particular choice models are useful. To
be useful, a model must be true enough, and it must
yield insights or predictions that justify the trouble of
modelling in the first place. Furthermore, the question
of how we can permissibly construct choice models,
and, in particular, define outcomes, is misguided in the
empirical setting, even if the question is important in
the normative setting.
A consequence of these points is that we cannot take
for granted that the best empirical models are expected
utility models. Having said that, the expected utility
principle has a powerful simplicity, and it underlies
much analysis in game theory, so should not be
dismissed too hastily.
WEEK 14 - Norms are social constructs, like tables and
chairs, but much less permanent and independent of
our thinking about them. Though norms are expressed
in prescribed or proscribed behaviors, actions we can
observe or at least describe, these actions would be
senseless, or at best lose their original meaning, without
the collective beliefs that support them. So the most
important question to ask about norms is what system
of beliefs supports and defines norms. Once we
understand these beliefs, we can tell whether the
behaviors that we observe are norm-driven or not,
measure the consistency between beliefs and behavior
under different conditions, and make predictions about
future behaviors. Before we come to define the kind of
beliefs that support and define social norms, however,
we shall briefly look at the most common, ubiquitous
definitions of social norms, their advantages and
shortcomings, and what can we learn from them.
Social norms have been extensively studied in the social
sciences, though different disciplines have stressed
different features of norms. Yet a shared, common
understanding of what a social norm is can be traced
across all fields:
“A norm refers to a behavior that is collectively
approved or disapproved in a group or population and is
enforced by sanctions.”
It is also tacitly implied  that social norms are very
different from moral or legal norms, though this
difference is not often articulated in detail. Although
legal norms in particular seem to fit the collective
approval/disapproval/sanctioning description, there are
important differences between legal and social norms.
 First and foremost, a legal norm is an explicit,
mandatory rule of behavior formally established
by the state. It usually proscribes behavior,
whereas social norms often also prescribe.
 Social norms are often unspoken and informal,
and their origin is not clearly identifiable with a
particular moment in time. They have evolved
out of protracted social interactions, but we
cannot usually tell exactly how they have
evolved and in which circumstances. Whereas a
legal norm explicitly indicates the conditions of
its implementation, the subjects whose actions
it regulates, their mutual rights and duties, and
the sanctions for failure to obey one’s duty, a
social norm is much less specific.
 This difference is particularly evident in
employer–employee relations. Such relations
are formally regulated by contracts, but the
greatest influence is usually exerted by non-
legal incentives and sanctions, such as
reputational concerns and relationship-specific
advantages. The social norms that regulate
work relations are much less specific than legal
contracts, and the sanctions for non-
compliance, such as blacklisting or negative
gossip, are entirely informal.
Social norms often engender expectations of
compliance that are felt to be legitimate, and close in a
sense to ‘having a right’ to expect certain behaviors on
the part of others, who therefore are perceived as
‘having an obligation’ to act in specific ways. This is
because we have an ingrained tendency to move
from what is to what ought to be, and conclude that
‘what is’ must be right or good. Yet, apart from our
long-standing habits of performing and expecting others
to perform certain actions, there is no deeper
foundation to these presumed ‘rights and obligations’,
however intensely felt they might be. Whereas violation
of legal norms elicits formal negative sanctions and
there is no formal reward for complying with the law,
the positive and negative sanctions that attach to social
norms are quite different. With a social norm, the
approved behavior is buoyed up by informal positive
sanctions (tangible rewards, praise, status, reputation,
etc.) and the censured behavior is discouraged by
means of negative sanctions (punishments, shaming,
ostracism, ridicule, etc.)
Note that informal sanctions are also used to
discourage or support moral norms. It is debatable
whether we can draw a sharp distinction between social
and moral norms, but we usually refer to norms as
‘moral’ when they have a universal content—such as
norms against harming others without reason— and
when our allegiance to them tends to be independent
of what others do. A distinguishing feature of social
norms is that they are conditionally followed, whereas a
moral norm is unconditional. This does not mean that
we always obey moral norms. We may be tempted to
perform ‘immoral’ acts, but an excuse such as ‘I did it
because others did it’ is not deemed to be acceptable.
In the case of a social norm, however, this is a perfectly
reasonable justification. So it is reasonable to state ‘I did
not pay my dues because I know nobody pays’, but few
would accept ‘I raped and killed the prisoners because
all my fellow soldiers did it’ as a good reason to perform
such a horrific act.
Sometimes social norms can get internalized to the
extent that they do not need social enforcement and
are spontaneously adhered to by individuals. In this
case we say that individuals are directly motivated to
comply with the norm, whereas the use of sanctions is a
form of indirect motivation. Sanctions, however, keep
playing a role, since ‘direct motivation’ may be tied to
feelings of guilt and shame that the mere thought of
transgression evokes. In this case an internal monitoring
mechanism has taken the place of social monitoring and
sanctioning. The sociologist Talcott Parsons was one of
the main proponents of norm internalization. In his
view, we form lasting dispositions to conform to our
society’s norms through a process of socialization that
starts within the family (Parsons 1951).
The very generic definition of norms as socially
approved behavior sup - ported by sanctions tells us
two important things.
 First, social norms are closely tied to sanctions;
without sanctions (internal or external), they
may not exist.
 Second, part of the very definition of norm is
that it refers to behaviors and patterns of
behavior that are collectively approved or
disapproved, hence such behaviors matter to
people.
A lot of attention has been paid to the question why
certain behaviors matter so much that people will go to
great lengths to make sure they are adhered to, and
engage in costly sanctioning to support them. An
obvious answer is that norms perform critical
social functions, such as
 Maintaining social order
 Coordinating useful collective  action
 Even help one group to exclude or discriminate
against another group
 Keeping vital resources within the group.
Yet saying that a norm performs an important social
function does not explain how it originated, or why we
keep obeying it. A norm may have evolved to smooth
social inter-actions, and it may keep doing so quite
efficiently, but we would be hard pressed to say that
this is the reason why it came about.
Take reciprocity. It is certainly important to live in a
social environment where people reciprocate valuable,
beneficial actions. Without reciprocity there would be
no trust, and without trust we would have no markets
or modern political systems: Markets and democracy
rely on people trusting their business partners, as well
as their elected representatives. Recognizing the social
importance of trust, we care for and support norms of
reciprocity, and in this sense we may say that
their stability is linked to the social functions they fulfil.
A society may have evolved several strategies that
promote reciprocation of trust; all these strategies
involve some punishment for non-reciprocators, from
mild to harsh, and they can exist alongside each other.
Taken together, all these strategies result in
observationally equivalent behaviors: almost all
individuals trust and reciprocate, but the norm itself
results from many different strategies. The individuals
who adopt one of these strategies do so because it is in
their long-run interest to reciprocate trust, not because
society at large benefits from it. A norm is stable if it is
durably obeyed by great part of the population (or
group) in which the norm exists.
To explain a norm’s stability, as well as its existence, we
have to look further into the reasons why individuals
conform. If we are less than fully aware of the benefits a
norm may bestow upon society or, even if aware, we
are not fully motivated by them, why do we conform?
Many believe the answer lies in the existence of
sanctions. They may be internal, as when we say that a
norm has been internalized, part of our value system.
Or, more often than not, external sanctions are at work
to keep people in line. In this case, we say that there is
a rational motivation to obey a norm: we want to reap
the benefits of conformity or avoid the costs of
transgression. If we think of individuals as rational
decision-makers, we can see the appeal of this view of
norm compliance. Norms are exogenous, external
constraints we have to take into account when we make
a choice.
Social norms are a different story. For one, the fact that
sanctions do play a role in compliance suggests that
following a norm may not be in the individual’s
immediate interest. Behaviors that are socially
beneficial, when not mandated by law, are normally
supported by social norms that involve sanctions, both
positive and negative. Social dilemmas, such as
overpopulation, pollution, or energy conservation are
examples of situations in which each individual profits
from free-riding, but the group is better off if everyone
contributes. Pro-social norms such as norms of
cooperation or reciprocity have evolved to solve such
dilemmas, and we often refer to them as unambiguous
examples of the discontinuity between individual and
collective interests.
Not all norms have evolved for this reason, however.
Norms of honor killing (murders of women by family
members that are justified as removing some imputed
stain on the family’s honor) do not seem to be related
to the provision of any collective good, even if honor is
the highest valued virtue in some cultures. Conforming
to an honor code confers or restores status to those
who comply with it, and not conforming is severely
sanctioned by the community. Strict honor codes are
costly to enforce (you may have to kill your own sister
or daughter), but the temptation to evade the norm is
tempered by the presence of positive (status, honor)
and negative (stigma, ridicule, lack of trust) sanctions. In
the words of Middle East media analyst Yotam Feldner,
The honor of the Arab family or tribe, the respect
accorded it, can be gravely damaged when one of its
women’s chastity is violated or when her reputation is
tainted. Consequently, a violation of a woman’s honor
requires severe action, as Tarrad Fayiz, a Jordanian
tribal leader, explains: ‘A woman is like an olive tree.
When its branch catches woodworm, it has to be
chopped off so that society stays clean and pure.’ The
murder of women to salvage their family’s honor results
in good part from the social and psychological pressure
felt by the killers, as they explain in their confessions.
Murderers repeatedly testify that their immediate social
circle, family, clan, village, or others expected them and
encouraged them to commit the murder. From society’s
perspective, refraining from killing the woman debases
her relatives. (Feldner 2000)
Norms exist because of the expectations of those who
follow them. These expectations are not just empirical,
as in the case of conventions; they are normative, too,
and may include the belief that transgressions will be
punished and compliance rewarded.
Finally, a definition of norms in terms of conditional
preferences and expectations is operational, in that it
allows us to make predictions about how changes in
expectations will trigger behavioral changes, as well as
measure norms and what determines our compliance.
WEEK 15 - METHODOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES:
INTERDISCIPLINARY IN ACTION
Science studies, or science and technology and society,
joins social science approaches with philosophy and
history to study the production of scientific knowledge
about the world. Philosophical questions about science
examine ethics, methods, and deeper assumptions;
history examines the dynamics of change in scientific
practice; social and cultural approaches include analysis
of social structures and power relations shaping and
shaped by science. Science studies brings together such
questions and methods in an array of studies of how
scientists work together and cooperate with
government and industry; cases that provide
information and ideas about the common problems you
face in an interdisciplinary workplace.
 Here we select some examples from our own work and
others’ to focus on three challenges: figuring the
‘whats’, the ‘hows’, and the ‘whys’ of interdisciplinary
work. The first case examines how dealing with racial
health disparities
1.       Discipline, Doctrine, Ethos: Interdisciplinary How,
What and Why?
 Interdisciplinary is an approach to academic learning,
research, and teaching that is juxtaposed with mono-
disciplinarily and to multidisciplinary. The term
‘discipline’ is commonly used to define the academic
backgrounds or learned skills of
professionals. Discipline comes from the Latin discere,
‘to learn’. In the Catholic Church discipline outlined the
rules one had to follow to behave in the ways desirable,
while doctrine corresponded to the theory or belief
guiding and realized by discipline (Cunningham 2002).
Doctrine was what a disciple (a student) learned from a
doctor (a teacher) through discipline.
Multidisciplinary involves many disciplines working side
by side, each on the questions it is expert on, with a
strict division of labor for addressing different aspects of
a challenge. Interdisciplinary, on the other hand,
involves a stronger form of disciplinary mixing. Consider
the etymology of the connective ‘inter-’ which means
‘in between’ or ‘among’, as in international, or
‘mutually’, as in interrelated or interacting. This is
strictly speaking different from multidisciplinary, which
would rather involve ‘multi-’, many or multiple,
disciplines, but would not necessarily mix them
(Alvargonzález 2011; Klein 2010).
Interdisciplinary must by default involve some sharing
or mutuality in disciplinary practice and theory, shaping
joint questions and joint answers to them. Such an
integration of disciplines could lead to the development
of new questions and domains of practice.
 This brings up the question of interdisciplinary
ethos. Ethos comes from Greek, where it has a dual
meaning: ‘habit’ or ‘custom’, and ‘character’. Ethos
comprises habits that build and define (moral)
character. Character, also a Greek word, comes from
the verb charaso, which means ‘to carve’. Our character
is built from habits, repeatedly carving us out
When we examine the ethos of science, or do ‘science
ethics’ we are asking: how do our science habits and
practices carve out people, and the world? Different
disciplines, different practices, carve out the world
differently. They have and form different characters for
people, and for the research produced. The visible
moral character of research, what ‘good’ it drives to
uphold or attain, can motivate people to become part of
a discipline. The ethos of an interdisciplinary effort is
thus also up for mutual negotiation and formation,
along with its ways of raising and addressing questions.
 Using these distinctions between discipline, doctrine,
and ethos we can think of being interdisciplinary as
responding to three main challenges:
 Finding a common basis for
understanding what is at stake (doctrine)
 Deciding and coordinating how to deal with
issues at stake (discipline)
 Justifying why we should pursue shared
research on these matters (ethos)
2.       Challenges in Action
A.      First Challenge: What is at Stake?
Brought together to handle a pressing social issue, one
of the first challenges collaborators face is
understanding exactly what is at stake. How is a stated
issue interpreted by each collaborator? One outcome of
disciplinary training is that different disciplines tend to
see the world differently. They specialize in studying
different phenomena or different aspects of the same
phenomenon
B.            SECOND Challenge: How do We Work Together?
A second area of challenges for interdisciplinary is
figuring out which methods and analyses are already
available for each discipline to bring to the table, and
when and how to use them. People with different ways
of conducting research have to sort out which among
their array of approaches should be applied to a task.
Work in different disciplines often happens in different
geographical spaces, following different timelines and
patterns of work activity. Coordinating work (or
peripheral activities) and respecting each member’s
disciplinary habits may seem practically impossible
within the same team. Further, divergences in
methodology often couple with discipline-specific social
worlds and negotiating work between disciplines often
involves negotiating different work cultures (Strauss
1978). Often this is precisely the site where conflict
among interdisciplinary participants is found.

C.     Third Challenge: Work with Divergent Ethos

 The third challenge you face when doing

interdisciplinary work is managing the different and at
times conflicting values placed in this work by different
stakeholders. As discussed, the ethos of a practice
regards the kind of character it forms and promotes. In
an interdisciplinary project aimed to tackle a socially
relevant issue, experts, policy-makers, and publics with
different ethos come together. Interdisciplinary work
will need to figure out what is ‘valuable’, as well as
‘valid’ or ‘accurate’, in conversation with how experts or
non-experts consider these points.

 You need to consider at least: (a) what society  values

about your work, (b) what  scientists  not familiar with
your  expertise value about your work, and (c)
what you yourself value about your work.

3.       Conclusion

Social science, history, and philosophy as well as natural

science are important here. Social sciences, history, and
philosophy examine relationships between societies,
technologies, and values. Research in Social studies
shows that doing science research, even natural science
research, is strongly influenced by the social and
political context where the science happens—not only
because societies decide to fund different projects
differently (or not at all) but also because problems
become apparent and possible to work on because of
the very communities and social structures that
scientific labor relies on. Conversely, the products of
scientific and technological work change our everyday
lives, give us new tools to raise new questions and solve
older ones. They shape what we worry about and how
we behave. This actual mutuality and interdependence
of the development of social groups, material tools, and
theoretical understandings is why we must think about
the social, the human, and the scientific together to
understand and reorient ourselves towards challenging
situations.

 To develop guides for interdisciplinary collaboration we

need more of all three: (1) work on central issues at
stake, (2) creating and testing models for cooperation
between science and socio-humanist scholars, and (3)
jointly assessing guidelines for such collaborations.
Doing and applying interdisciplinary science successfully
is a case-by-case matter, but preparing for the kinds of
challenges that may arise is a good start for learning to
do interdisciplinary science