PUNCTUALITY - A Cultural Trait as Equilibrium
نویسندگان
چکیده
A people’s culture, norms and habits are important determinants not just of the quality of social life but of economic progress and growth. In this paper we take the view that while the importance of culture is undeniable, the innateness of culture is not. We work here with a single example and demonstrate how a human trait which is widely believed to be cultural is at the same time a matter of choice. The example that we shall work with concerns punctuality. We show that punctuality may be simply an equilibrium response of individuals to what they expect others to do. The same society can get caught in a punctual equilibrium or a non-punctual equilibrium. JEL codes: C62, C72, D29, D71.
منابع مشابه
Cultural Transmission on the Taskscape: Exploring the Effects of Taskscape Visibility on Cultural Diversity
Culturally transmitted behavior can be structured in its performance both geographically and temporally, in terms of where and when implements are made and used on the landscape (what Ingold calls "the taskscape"). Yet cultural transmission theory has not yet explored the consequences of behaviors transmitted differently due to their enactment at different taskscape locations, what Tostevin cal...
متن کاملEffects of Conformism on the Cultural Evolution of Social Behaviour
Models of cultural evolution study how the distribution of cultural traits changes over time. The dynamics of cultural evolution strongly depends on the way these traits are transmitted between individuals by social learning. Two prominent forms of social learning are payoff-based learning (imitating others that have higher payoffs) and conformist learning (imitating locally common behaviours)....
متن کاملExtraordinary Sex Ratios: Cultural Effects on Ecological Consequences
We model sex-structured population dynamics to analyze pairwise competition between groups differing both genetically and culturally. A sex-ratio allele is expressed in the heterogametic sex only, so that assumptions of Fisher's analysis do not apply. Sex-ratio evolution drives cultural evolution of a group-associated trait governing mortality in the homogametic sex. The two-sex dynamics under ...
متن کاملMethodological Review for Capacity and Punctuality Assessment Procedures
Climate change, congestion, safety, energy consumption and pollution are among the major issues that the European :::union::: and the wider world are facing nowadays. The European Commission is working towards the creation of a Single European Railway Area, encouraging a modal shift towards rail (mainly from road) in order to achieve a more competitive and sustainable European transport syst...
متن کاملThe dynamics of continuous cultural traits in social networks
We consider an OLG model (of a socialization process) where continuous traits are transmitted from an adult generation to the children. A weighted social network describes how children are influenced not only by their parents but also by other role models within the society. Parents can invest into the purposeful socialization of their children by strategically displaying a cultural trait (whic...
متن کامل