Contact Information
M.I.T. Sloan School
E52-564
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
Tel: 617-258-8912
Fax: 617-253-2660
E-mail: dcentola@mit.edu

Support Staff
Name: Michelle Cole
Tel: 617-258-5583
E-mail: mmcole@mit.edu

Areas
Behavior and Policy Sciences (BPS)
Management Science (MS)

Groups

• Economic Sociology
• System Dynamics

Are norms always functional? My research on norms and collective action studies the dynamics through which communities “lock in” to social norms. Sometimes norms promote cooperation for the public good, other times they can force people into undesirable “social traps”, and even de-stabilize collective action.

The Emperor's Dilemma: A Computational Model of Self-Enforcing Norms
American Journal of Sociology (2005)
Damon Centola, Robb Willer, and Michael Macy
We investigate how normative behaviors that can be detrimental to everyone in a population can nonetheless wind up not only spreading, but also being enforced by every member of the population.