Tipping point (physics)

Electrical engineering

Abandonment (legal)

Economic growth

Politics

Welfare

Hindsight bias

Engineering

Political science

Norm (philosophy)

Psychology

Economics

Social change

Regime change

Democracy

Market economy

Social psychology

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Significance Social tipping—instances of sudden change that upend social order—is rarely anticipated and usually understood only in hindsight. The ability to predict when societies will reach a tipping point has significant implications for welfare, especially when social norms are detrimental. In a large-scale laboratory experiment, we identify a model that accurately predicts social tipping and use it to address a long-standing puzzle: Why do norms sometimes persist when they are detrimental to social welfare? We show that beneficial norm change is often hindered by a desire to avoid the costs associated with transitioning to a new norm. We find that policies that help societies develop a common understanding of the benefits from change foster the abandonment of detrimental norms.

Predicting social tipping and norm change in controlled experiments