can be anything in between.
I'm being deliberately vague about group sizes here, but there definitely is a scale consideration with societal pressures. And because the increasing scale of our society is one of the primary reasons our societal pressure systems are failing, it's important to keep these considerations in mind.
Another difference between the categories of societal pressure is that they operate at distinct times during a security event. Moral pressure can operate either before, during, or after an individual defects. Reputational, as well as most institutional, pressure operates after the defection, although some institutional pressure operates during. Security can operate before, during, or after.
Any measures that operate during or after the event affect the trade-off through a feedback loop. Someone who knows of the negative outcome—perhaps ostracism due to a bad reputation, or a jail sentence—either through direct knowledge or through seeing it happen to someone else, might refrain from defecting in order to avoid it. This is deterrence.
All of this, and more, is illustrated in the complicated block diagram below. Along the bottom axis is the timeline: before, during, and after defection. Along the left are the different categories of societal pressure: moral and reputational (considered together), institutional, and security systems. The traits/tendencies box represents the physical and emotional aspects of people that make them more or less likely to defect. Natural defenses are aspects of targets that make them more or less difficult to attack. Neither of these are societal pressure systems, but I include them for the sake of completeness.
An example might be useful here. Alice is deciding whether to burglarize a house. The group interest is for her not to burglarize the house, but she has some competing interest—it doesn't matter what it is—that makes her want to burglarize the house. Different pressures affect her risk trade-off in different ways.
Traits/tendencies. If Alice is afraid of heights, she won't try to break in through a second-story window. If she has a broken leg, she probably won't try to break in at all. These considerations operate before defection, at the point of the risk trade-off, when she's deciding whether or not to burglarize the house. (Note that this is not societal pressure.)
Natural defenses operate during the burglary. Maybe the owner of the house is home and might tackle Alice. (Again, note that this is not societal pressure.)
Most moral pressures operate at the point of the risk trade-off, or decision: Alice's sense of fairness, sense of right and wrong, and desire to obey the law. Some operate during the actual burglary: feelings of empathy, for example. Some operate after she's committed her crime: guilt, shame, and so on.
Reputational pressures, assuming she's caught, operate after she's done burglarizing the house. They stem from the reactions and responses of others.
Institutional pressures also operate after she's done burglarizing the house. Think of laws and mechanisms to punish the guilty in this case.
Security systems can operate before, during, or after. Preemptive interventions, including incarcerating Alice before she commits the crime or forcing her to take some mood-altering medication that makes her not want to burglarize houses, operate before. Defenses operate during: door locks and window bars make it harder for her to burglarize the house. Detection systems can operate during or after: a burglar alarm calls a response that may or may not come in time. Interventions, like camouflage and authentication systems, operate during as well. Forensic systems operate afterwards, and may identify Alice as the burglar. There's one more type of security system: recovery systems that operate after a burglary can provide a perverse incentive to those aware that the consequences of their misbehavior can be mitigated at no cost to themselves. If Alice knows the
I'm being deliberately vague about group sizes here, but there definitely is a scale consideration with societal pressures. And because the increasing scale of our society is one of the primary reasons our societal pressure systems are failing, it's important to keep these considerations in mind.
Another difference between the categories of societal pressure is that they operate at distinct times during a security event. Moral pressure can operate either before, during, or after an individual defects. Reputational, as well as most institutional, pressure operates after the defection, although some institutional pressure operates during. Security can operate before, during, or after.
Any measures that operate during or after the event affect the trade-off through a feedback loop. Someone who knows of the negative outcome—perhaps ostracism due to a bad reputation, or a jail sentence—either through direct knowledge or through seeing it happen to someone else, might refrain from defecting in order to avoid it. This is deterrence.
All of this, and more, is illustrated in the complicated block diagram below. Along the bottom axis is the timeline: before, during, and after defection. Along the left are the different categories of societal pressure: moral and reputational (considered together), institutional, and security systems. The traits/tendencies box represents the physical and emotional aspects of people that make them more or less likely to defect. Natural defenses are aspects of targets that make them more or less difficult to attack. Neither of these are societal pressure systems, but I include them for the sake of completeness.
An example might be useful here. Alice is deciding whether to burglarize a house. The group interest is for her not to burglarize the house, but she has some competing interest—it doesn't matter what it is—that makes her want to burglarize the house. Different pressures affect her risk trade-off in different ways.
Traits/tendencies. If Alice is afraid of heights, she won't try to break in through a second-story window. If she has a broken leg, she probably won't try to break in at all. These considerations operate before defection, at the point of the risk trade-off, when she's deciding whether or not to burglarize the house. (Note that this is not societal pressure.)
Natural defenses operate during the burglary. Maybe the owner of the house is home and might tackle Alice. (Again, note that this is not societal pressure.)
Most moral pressures operate at the point of the risk trade-off, or decision: Alice's sense of fairness, sense of right and wrong, and desire to obey the law. Some operate during the actual burglary: feelings of empathy, for example. Some operate after she's committed her crime: guilt, shame, and so on.
Reputational pressures, assuming she's caught, operate after she's done burglarizing the house. They stem from the reactions and responses of others.
Institutional pressures also operate after she's done burglarizing the house. Think of laws and mechanisms to punish the guilty in this case.
Security systems can operate before, during, or after. Preemptive interventions, including incarcerating Alice before she commits the crime or forcing her to take some mood-altering medication that makes her not want to burglarize houses, operate before. Defenses operate during: door locks and window bars make it harder for her to burglarize the house. Detection systems can operate during or after: a burglar alarm calls a response that may or may not come in time. Interventions, like camouflage and authentication systems, operate during as well. Forensic systems operate afterwards, and may identify Alice as the burglar. There's one more type of security system: recovery systems that operate after a burglary can provide a perverse incentive to those aware that the consequences of their misbehavior can be mitigated at no cost to themselves. If Alice knows the
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