A thought on Reciprocity in the Mixed World of Human Drivers and Autonomous Cars
The road we face everyday abounds with trained, yet imperfect human drivers. Sometimes the car ahead yields when we tries to change the line. And if you are a novice driver, you might have heard a car horn from the behind. All these driver behavior is apparently social, and the rule of reciprocity can be applied.
After reading “The Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement”,
I thought some ideas over, converging the norm of reciprocity with autonomous vehicles.
The norm of reciprocity is discussed in terms of functionalism. Gouldner(1960) clarifies its contribution to the stability of social systems. Though I couldn’t understand everything and had a hard time reading it through, it gave me substantial insights.
Gouldner suggests two minimal demands of reciprocity:
(1) People should help those who have helped them
(2) People should not injure those who have helped them
I found where it says about ‘social interaction’,
“The idea of the reciprocities complex leads us to the historical or genetic dimension of social interaction. (…) Insofar as men live under such a rule of reciprocity, when one party benefits another, an obligation is generated. The recipient is now indebted to the donor, and he remains so until he repays.(…)These outstanding obligations, no less than those already given compliance, contribute substantially to the stability of social systems. (…) In addition, it is morally improper, under the norm of reciprocity, to break off relations or to launch hostilities against those to whom you are still indebted.”
What if the norm of reciprocity could be applied to driving behavior?
The road situation itself is ‘comparative indeterminacy’, I suppose. It is indeed interesting to think that it functions as a stabilizing factor.
“Still another way in which the general norm of reciprocity is implicated in the maintenance of social system stability is related to an important attribute of the norm, namely, its comparative indeterminacy. (…) This indeterminacy enables the norm of reciprocity to perform some of its most important system-stabilizing functions. Being indeterminate, the norm can be applied to countless ad hoc transactions, thus providing a flexible moral sanction for transactions which might not otherwise be regulated by specific status obligations.”
This part about ‘moral sanctions’ was also intriguing. It spurred many possible solutions on road dynamics, especially in Korea. What if moral behaviors on road could be fortified?
“The general norm of reciprocity, however, is a second-order defense of stability; it provides a further source of motivation and an additional moral sanction for conforming with specific status obligations. (…) In this manner, the sentiment of gratitude joins forces with the sentiment of rectitude and adds a safety margin in the motivation to conformity.”
“It helps to initiate social interaction and is functional in the early phases of certain groups before they have developed a differentiated and customary set of status duties.”
Thinking about autonomous cars in the future, we can imagine a driving agent which delegates our intentions. In addition, most of us imagine automation system should necessarily entail V2V, V2I interaction to navigate safely. This necessity brings social interactions between a human driver and an autonomous agent (of another car). So, how do they cooperate with each other in complex road situations? How can we build an agent that interacts with other human drivers in a way that motivates them to conform with new safety rules?
We could look up for the norm of reciprocity in road situations. In some reported cases, human drivers are prone to become ungenerous when they know the car next to them is an autonomous car. As a consequence, they yield less and bear less. The reason is yet unclear; maybe an autonomous car (or automated car in current status) is seen less humane as we all know it is controlled by a ‘machine’, not another human. Well, the reason could vary.
Maybe we need a driving agent which helps us remind of the norm of reciprocity. So that we could implicitly agree to a certain form of obligation on each other by exchanges of hospital behaviors, regardless of the knowledge on who controls the car. This agent-aided reciprocity might contribute to form a stabilized road in which both human drivers and autonomous systems roll along in harmony.
Gouldner, A. W. (1960). The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement.American sociological review, 161–178.
