I spent much of my morning running in a loop around an unfamiliar park. I noticed one, then two, then a whole series of people running in the opposite direction to me. I then realised that after thirty minutes I’d seen no one else running in my direction. I began to wonder if there was some rule that runners were supposed to run in a certain direction around the trail. I began to infer a social norm from a behavioural convergence which I suspected I was unaware of because I was an outsider to the area.
It’s only when I finally saw someone else running in my direction that I realised what was happening. The route through which you entered the park inevitably shaped which direction you started running in. The other side of the park was a densely populated student area and everyone I could see running the other way did look plausibly like a student I began to notice. What was an aggregate dynamic of how individuals acted in shared circumstances was easy to misconstrue as a social norm driving a behavioural convergence.
I thought this was an interesting example of two points. Firstly, we shouldn’t infer a common motivation from an (apparently) convergent behaviour. Sometimes people do the same thing for the same reason but often it can be a contingent response to shared circumstances. Secondly, this distinction between aggregation outcomes (i.e. individuals responding to their circumstances) and collective outcomes (i.e. individuals acting on the basis of a shared norm) is a core category of realist sociologist which I don’t think tends to be invoked or reflected on enough.
Mark Carrigan 