A sociological perspective on measuring social norms bymeans of strategy method experiments

The measurement of social norms plays a pivotal role in many social sciences.While economists predominantly conduct experiments, sociologistsrather employ (factorial) surveys. Both methods, however, suer from distinctweaknesses. Experiments, on the one hand, often fall short in themeasurement of more complex elements, such as the conditionality or thelevel of consensus of social norms. Surveys, on the other, lack the abilityto measure actual behavior. This paper argues that the so-called "strategymethod" compensates for these weaknesses by combining the observationalcharacteristic of experiments with the conditionality of factorial surveys. Wecan demonstrate the applicability of the strategy method for the measurementof conditional bargaining norms in the case of ultimatum games. Tosubstantiate our claim, we conduct a methodological experiment in which wecompare results for the strategy ultimatum game with those from a "conventional"ultimatum game. The strategy method yields higher levels ofnormative compliance in terms of rejecting "unfair" oers. We concludethat the strategy method rather measures normative expectations whereasthe "conventional" ultimatum game the willingness to sacrice own protsto adhere to these expectations. Our results are consistent with previouscomparative research between factorial surveys and observational data.