Fabian Winter
I am a sociologist based at the University of Zurich. Before that, I was the head of the Max-Planck Research Group "Mechanisms of Normative Change" at the Max-Planck-Insitute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn, Germany. I have a background in sociology with quite some exposure to econ over the last decade or so. In the past I have worked at the Max-Planck-Institute for Economics in Jena, the ETH Zürich, and the University of Bern.
Professionally, I am interested in social norms and how they evolve over time. For most of my time, I am an experimental social scientist, but I also use surveys, computer simulations or Big Data stuff to answer the questions I am interested in. Why is it that some norms are unexpectedly stable up to a tipping point, like homophobia in football, but change rapidly once they start to do so? Or why, in contrast, are the normative conflicts about gender equality so persistent? How do internet discourses change in the presence of hate speech and fake news? Or how does discrimination in norm enforcement change with migration? Apparently, social and legal norms are not made for eternity. At any point in time, old norms erode and new norms emerge. Yet, normative change is often eruptive. And norms can be sticky, even if they almost completely lack societal support. We study the mechanisms determining these different dynamics of normative change from an interdisciplinary perspective. We aim to contribute to the understanding and management of social change using a broad range of experimental and non-experimental empirical methods.
I also have a DFG-funded project on Volunteering under Population Uncertainty.
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