Transmitting the paternal surname to children is a deep-rooted custom that has been in force in most patrilineal societies for centuries. Often, it is also a legal norm. On a symbolic level, it speaks very eloquently of the gender inequality that persists in a society because it makes maternal identity invisible. Despite this obvious symbolic relevance, the question of children’s surnames has rarely been investigated in the sociological literature. Inspired by a recent ruling by the Italian Constitutional Court on the transmission of surnames of both parents, the project aims to fill this gap in empirical research. This survey experiment investigates the role of social norms in shaping the transmission of the paternal surname and the alternative practice of the double surname (i.e.: paternal and maternal). According to Bicchieri (2016), a “social norm is a rule of behavior such that individuals prefer to conform to it on condition that they believe that (a) most people in their reference network conform to it (empirical expectation), and (b) that most people in their reference network believe they ought to conform to it (normative expectation)”. Applied to the case of the paternal surname, it means that parents might refrain from giving a double surname, even when legally possible, because they believe other people give the paternal surname and they believe others (e.g., relatives, friends) would like them to give the paternal surname. In other words, if this practice does not simply reflect an individual conviction but is a social norm, a change in the underlying expectations should affect behavior. We want to test whether changing expectations through the manipulation of a hypothetical scenario affects subjects’ propensity to give a double surname.

Team: Renzo Carriero (CPS e Collegio), Giulia Dotti Sani, Riccardo Ladini, Francesco Molteni (UniMI, Dipartimento di Scienze sociali e politiche, spsTREND lab)

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed most countries to an unexpected crisis, with unclear consequences for citizens’ trust in others and public authorities. This study shed light on how social and political trust changed during the pandemic. We conducted a longitudinal survey in the US of about 1000 respondents at three points during the pandemic. We elicited respondents’ trust towards other people and different institutional authorities, along with attribution of responsibility for the current situation. Results show that institutional trust fell while interpersonal trust slightly increased, especially during the peak of the first pandemic wave. This dynamic was mainly driven by Republicans, whose institutional trust decreased, especially when exposed to COVID-19, along with growth in social trust. Considering that Republicans attributed, at the time, more responsibilities to their political leader, we argue that institutional trust was crowded out by social trust. Disappointed voters felt unprotected by institutions and looked for support elsewhere in society. Consistent with this, though, in the reverse direction, experimental results from the third wave show that Republicans increased institutional trust. However, social trust slightly fell when primed with positive information about the pandemic. These findings suggest that societal shocks may induce people to exchange formal with informal institutions as a coping strategy, with social and political trust moving in opposite directions.

Team: Pierluigi Conzo (ESt and CCA); Arnstein Aassve, Tommaso Capezzone Nicolò Cavalli and Chen Peng (Bocconi University) 

As a local unit CLOSER collected data for an international study of metanorms (i.e., norms regulating behavior in reaction to the violation of a social norm) that was conducted in 57 countries. The study yielded exciting insights into how metanorms vary across the globe and examined how several cultural theories accounted for this variation. The main results were published in Nature Communications, and the rich dataset continues to be used in other papers. 

PI: Davide Barrera (CPS)

• Gambetta, D., & Morisi, D. (2022). COVID-19 infection induces higher trust in strangers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(32), e2116818119.

• Eriksson, K., Strimling, P., Gelfand, M., Wu, J., Abernathy, J., Akotia, C. S., ... & Van Lange, P. A. (2021). Perceptions of the appropriate response to norm violation in 57 societies. Nature communications, 12(1), 1-11.

• Conzo, P., & Salustri, F. (2019). A war is forever: The long-run effects of early exposure to World War II on trust. European Economic Review, 120, 103313.

• Conzo, P. (2018). Natural Disasters and Social Preferences: The Effect of Tsunami-Memories on Cheating in Sri Lanka. The Journal of Development Studies, 54(10), 1912-1931.

• Becchetti, L., Castriota, S., & Conzo, P. (2017). Disaster, aid, and preferences: The long-run impact of the tsunami on giving in Sri Lanka. World Development, 94, 157-173.

• Migheli, M. (2017). Ubuntu and social capital: a strong relationship and a possible instrument of socio-economic development. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 41(4), 1213-1235.

• Przepiorka, W., Szekely, A., Andrighetto, G., Diekmann, A., & Tummolini, L. (2022). How norms emerge from conventions (and change). Socius, 8.