ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3 we noted that culture defines the role of what we called the external observer, who generally ensures that the agent feels uncomfortable and encouraged to amend his behaviour if his actions deviate from the expectations of his community of reference. In other words, the external observer informs the individual about the prevailing customs and ethics, the constraints imposed by the group upon his behaviour and possibly the positive and negative incentives that the group provides with regard to (spurious) altruism.7 Cultural patterns include personal emotions, as long as their expressions are recognized (codified) by the external observer. In fact, such expressions are frequently desirable, since they generate significant information about the expectations and the behavioural routines of the individual – and thus about his reliability and the terms of possible cooperation. This clearly plays a very valuable role when there are opportunities to interact, but enforcement is weak and expensive, and contracts are incomplete. Culture also reflects deontic principles, which shape how the individual thinks and perceives what happens around him. Deontic principles can be shared with the rest of the community, in which case they define the common notion of moral legitimacy of institutions (the rules of the game) or social action (policies); but it may also happen that the individual develops his own moral standards. These could originate from the outside world, possibly from another culture; they can be the product of new ideologies proposed by persuasive intellectual innovators; or they can be shaped by the inner circle of people with whom the individual interacts more frequently – family members, friends, teachers, colleagues.8 Hence, (collective) culture and (individual) psychological patterns coincide for the pure conformist, who believes that public opinion and common wisdom are always right, fair, and just; and that the proper course of action is to imitate and follow the crowd, whatever that means. In vital communities, conformism is of course the exception rather than the rule. In these societies, psychological patterns include curiosity, risk taking, drives for self-betterment, and the skill and willingness to adapt to new environments. These are typically individual features, which vary across individuals and are the engines of entrepreneurial advance as well as of cultural change.
