Thesis advisor: Liane Young / Many debates in moral psychology have revolved around the function of harm norms (e.g., against causing pain to others) and purity norms (e.g., against sexual deviance or consuming taboo foods). Two key pieces of this debate are 1) whether purity norms constitute a separate moral domain than harm norms, each with distinct evolved functions, and 2) if so, whether the function of purity norms is to guard people from disgusting behavior that may signal the threat of disease-causing pathogens. Paper 1 addresses the first point by examining how increasing attention to a violator’s mental states (e.g., whether they acted intentionally or accidentally) changes the way people process harm and purity violations. Using behavioral and neuroimaging techniques, it supports a growing literature demonstrating that judgments of purity violations are influenced less by information about the violator’s intent than judgments of harm violations and suggests distinct functions for harm and purity norms. Paper 2 addresses both points by examining how the relational-context of a violation (e.g., whether an action is directed at oneself or another person) impacts judgments of harm and purity violations. Three studies demonstrate that unlike moral judgments of harm violations, moral judgments of purity violations are more tied to the negative impact a violator has on themselves as opposed to others. Moreover, when a participant was the target of another person’s impure actions, their moral judgments of the action were predicted more by perceptions of harm than purity, suggesting that purity norms do not necessarily track concerns about pathogen exposure. Finally, given the evidence in Papers 1 and 2, Paper 3 tests a novel functional distinction between harm and purity norms whereby harm norms regulate the negative impact people have on each other while purity norms function to define group boundaries by setting expectations about how people conduct themselves. Together, these papers challenge current accounts of the evolutionary origins of harm and purity norms and suggest important new avenues for fully characterizing the function of distinct moral norms. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Psychology.

published_or_final_version / Mathematics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Cette thèse analyse l'impact des normes internationales volontaires, publiques comme privées, sur le droit de l'Union européenne. Dans un contexte de mondialisation et d'interdépendance économique croissante, ces normes, qui vont des recommandations et déclarations des organisations internationales aux normes et standards techniques, comme les normes ISO ou les labels de qualité, prolifèrent au niveau international et européen. Adoptés notamment dans le cadre d'un processus de co voire d'autorégulation, qui permet aux acteurs privés d'un secteur d'élaborer les règles qui leur seront appliqués, la multiplication de ces normes et standards volontaires emporte des conséquences particulièrement importantes dans la mise en œuvre des politiques publiques internationales et européennes, et invite à repenser le concept de normativité ou force contraignante / This thesis analyses the impact of international soft norms, public and private, on European law. In a context of globalisation and increasing economic interdependance, these normes, which range from recommendations and declarations from international organisations to technical norms and standards, like ISO norms or quality labels, proliferate at both international and european level. Adopted notably in the framework of co or self regulation, allowing private actors from the concerned sector to elaborate their own rules, the multiplication of these voluntary norms and standards has particularly important consequences in the implementation of international and european public policies, and prompts to rethink the concept of « normativity » and « binding force »

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Recent development of implicit measures has enabled researchers to investigate the relation between implicit attitudes and automatic behaviours. Among these measures, the implicit association test (IAT: Greenwald, McGhee Schwartz, 1998) is one of the most widely used measures of implicit attitudes. However, recently, Olson and Fazio (2004) demonstrated that the IAT is contaminated by ???extrapersonal associations??? and suggested that the personalized version of the IAT is less influenced by these associations. In this paper, we demonstrated that the extrapersonal associations reflect cultural norms and predict meaningful behaviour. In Study 1, we found that the traditional IAT is predicted by both the personalized IAT and our cultural norm IAT. In Study 2, we found the cross-cultural differences in the implicit cultural norms. Finally, in Study 3, we demonstrated that the personalized IAT and normative IAT both predict behaviours among European-Canadians and Asian-Canadians. Thus, our studies provide evidence of predictive validity for the cultural norm IAT.

Many taxing authorities, including those in the United States (U.S.), rely on voluntary tax compliance and continually search for ways to increase tax revenues. Most of these methods are costly and labor intensive, such as audits and penalties for noncompliance. Prior tax compliance research has heavily investigated the influence that economic factors, such as tax rates and penalties, have on individual compliance intentions. However, economic models fail to fully predict individual tax compliance. Psychology literature suggests that social factors may also play an important role in individual tax compliance decisions. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence that social and psychological factors have on individuals' tax compliance intentions. Specifically, a model of taxpayer compliance is hypothesized that suggests that norms, perceived fairness of the tax system, and trust in government have a significant influence on compliance intentions. Results of a survey of 217 U.S. taxpayers found support for the influence of social factors on tax compliance. This research concludes that social norms have an indirect influence on compliance intentions through internalization as personal norms. Specifically, as the strength of social norms in favor of tax compliance increase, personal norms of tax compliance also increase, and this leads to a subsequent increase in compliance intentions. This dissertation also finds that trust in government and the perceived fairness of the tax system have a significant influence on compliance intentions. Supplemental analyses indicate that trust in government fully mediates the relationship between perceived fairness of the tax system and compliance intentions. This research offers several contributions to accounting literature and provides valuable insight for taxing authorities. First, this study examines taxpayer compliance from a psychological, rather than an economics driven, perspective. The suggested model of taxpayer compliance posits that social norms have a significant influence on compliance intentions. This information may help taxing authorities develop less costly and more effective strategies for increasing taxpayer compliance. This study also examines the influence that perceived fairness of the tax system has on compliance intentions. This is a widely debated topic in the media and social settings and may have a particularly strong influence on compliance intentions during these times of political and social arguments regarding tax equity. Finally, trust in government around the world has seen a continual decline. The results indicate that decreased trust in government and decreased perceived fairness of the tax system lead to decreased intention to comply with tax laws. Such information may help governments understand actions they can take to improve tax compliance.

Inspired by the definition of Gowers norms we study integrals of products of multi-variate functions. The $L_p$ norms, certain trace norms, and the Gowers norms are all defined by taking the proper root of one of these integrals. These integrals are important from a combinatorial point of view as inequalities between them are useful in understanding the relation between various subgraph densities. Lov\'asz asked the following questions: (1) Which integrals correspond to norm functions? (2) What are the common properties of the corresponding normed spaces? We address these two questions. We show that such a formula is a norm if and only if it satisfies a H\"older type inequality. This condition turns out to be very useful: First we apply it to prove various necessary conditions on the structure of the integrals which correspond to norm functions. We also apply the condition to an important conjecture of Erd\H{o}s, Simonovits, and Sidorenko. Roughly speaking, the conjecture says that among all graphs with the same edge density, random graphs contain the least number of copies of every bipartite graph. This had been verified previously for trees, the $3$-dimensional cube, and a few other families of bipartite graphs. The special case of the conjecture for paths, one of the simplest families of bipartite graphs, is equivalent to the Blakley-Roy theorem in linear algebra. Our results verify the conjecture for certain graphs including all hypercubes, one of the important classes of bipartite graphs, and thus generalize a result of Erd\H{o}s and Simonovits. In fact, for hypercubes we can prove statements that are surprisingly stronger than the assertion of the conjecture. To address the second question of Lov\'asz we study these normed spaces from a geometric point of view, and determine their moduli of smoothness and convexity. These two parameters are among the most important invariants in Banach space theory. Our result in particular determines the moduli of smoothness and convexity of Gowers norms. In some cases we are able to prove the Hanner inequality, one of the strongest inequalities related to the concept of smoothness and convexity. We also prove a complex interpolation theorem for these normed spaces, and use this and the Hanner inequality to obtain various optimum results in terms of the constants involved in the definition of moduli of smoothness and convexity.

Inspired by the definition of Gowers norms we study integrals of products of multi-variate functions. The $L_p$ norms, certain trace norms, and the Gowers norms are all defined by taking the proper root of one of these integrals. These integrals are important from a combinatorial point of view as inequalities between them are useful in understanding the relation between various subgraph densities. Lov\'asz asked the following questions: (1) Which integrals correspond to norm functions? (2) What are the common properties of the corresponding normed spaces? We address these two questions. We show that such a formula is a norm if and only if it satisfies a H\"older type inequality. This condition turns out to be very useful: First we apply it to prove various necessary conditions on the structure of the integrals which correspond to norm functions. We also apply the condition to an important conjecture of Erd\H{o}s, Simonovits, and Sidorenko. Roughly speaking, the conjecture says that among all graphs with the same edge density, random graphs contain the least number of copies of every bipartite graph. This had been verified previously for trees, the $3$-dimensional cube, and a few other families of bipartite graphs. The special case of the conjecture for paths, one of the simplest families of bipartite graphs, is equivalent to the Blakley-Roy theorem in linear algebra. Our results verify the conjecture for certain graphs including all hypercubes, one of the important classes of bipartite graphs, and thus generalize a result of Erd\H{o}s and Simonovits. In fact, for hypercubes we can prove statements that are surprisingly stronger than the assertion of the conjecture. To address the second question of Lov\'asz we study these normed spaces from a geometric point of view, and determine their moduli of smoothness and convexity. These two parameters are among the most important invariants in Banach space theory. Our result in particular determines the moduli of smoothness and convexity of Gowers norms. In some cases we are able to prove the Hanner inequality, one of the strongest inequalities related to the concept of smoothness and convexity. We also prove a complex interpolation theorem for these normed spaces, and use this and the Hanner inequality to obtain various optimum results in terms of the constants involved in the definition of moduli of smoothness and convexity.

The present research examined how other people’s evaluations towards social groups will develop and how these evaluations will affect discriminatory behaviour outside of conscious effort. By living in a society people are exposed to other people’s preferences or beliefs and these culturally shared preferences or beliefs can become automatic over time. I call this construct implicit normative evaluations. In the first series of studies I developed and validated implicit normative evaluations measures. Study 2 demonstrated that implicit normative evaluations would develop by exposure to cultural norms. Study 3 showed that those who were exposed to an audience who laughed at offensive racist jokes were more likely to have negative implicit normative evaluation towards a target group and were more likely to engage in discriminatory behaviour than those who were exposed to an audience who did not laugh at the racist jokes. Finally in Study 4, I examined the consequences of implicit normative evaluations towards Black people and found that implicit normative evaluations played a role in the shooter bias. The implications of implicit normative evaluations in developing potential interventions for prejudice reduction will be discussed.

The present research examined how other people’s evaluations towards social groups will develop and how these evaluations will affect discriminatory behaviour outside of conscious effort. By living in a society people are exposed to other people’s preferences or beliefs and these culturally shared preferences or beliefs can become automatic over time. I call this construct implicit normative evaluations. In the first series of studies I developed and validated implicit normative evaluations measures. Study 2 demonstrated that implicit normative evaluations would develop by exposure to cultural norms. Study 3 showed that those who were exposed to an audience who laughed at offensive racist jokes were more likely to have negative implicit normative evaluation towards a target group and were more likely to engage in discriminatory behaviour than those who were exposed to an audience who did not laugh at the racist jokes. Finally in Study 4, I examined the consequences of implicit normative evaluations towards Black people and found that implicit normative evaluations played a role in the shooter bias. The implications of implicit normative evaluations in developing potential interventions for prejudice reduction will be discussed.