Cultural Norms, From Long Ago, Persist Even as They Clash With a Modern World

The fix is not to dismiss them, but to work with them

Burgeoning microentrepreneurs turning down cash grants? Economies that would benefit from higher workforce participation keeping women from taking jobs? People refusing medical care that can protect and improve their health? 

These would seem to rate as poor choices. Yet they are all modern-day realities.

A paper by UCLA Anderson’s Paola Giuliano explains that, when viewed in historical context, these seemingly irrational behaviors can in fact be quite logical. The paper is forthcoming as a chapter in the Handbook of the Economics of Identity, edited by George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton.

Giuliano draws together decades of research across economics, sociology and psychology to show how behaviors that seem puzzling or counterproductive today are often rooted in habits and beliefs passed down from earlier generations that, in their time, were sensible and practical.

Moreover, generational hand-me-down behaviors can, as Giuliano puts it, be very sticky: They continue to drive decisions long after the world that made them rational has changed. Continuing to heed a cultural norm can lead people to make choices that made sense for earlier generations, not necessarily for them.

Yet relying on cultural traditions that no longer fit current conditions — what Giuliano frames as a cultural mismatch — is not a sign of irrationality, but a reflection of how deeply these historical patterns take hold. Ignoring that mismatch is a major reason policies meant to help people so often fall short.

Giuliano emphasizes that understanding why a cultural norm exists, not just that it does, is a necessary first step in designing policies that can actually be effective. The fact that Kenyan entrepreneurs turned down grants makes more sense once you understand that reciprocity is a deeply embedded social norm, which makes taking an out-of-the-blue cash infusion from a stranger difficult to accept.

Traditional Shortcuts

At the heart of Giuliano’s review of research is a simple idea: Cultural norms passed across generations function as practical decision shortcuts. When gathering information independently is difficult, slow or expensive, it is often more efficient to follow rules of thumb. And leaning on what your forebears figured out through their own trial and error becomes compelling. 

Because the shortcuts were effective, societies kept (and keep) transmitting them — from parents to children, through peers, and through the institutions and role models that shape behavior over time. Giuliano has done research showing how gender-based norms continue to impact educational settings.

That said, not all norms are equally sticky. Beliefs tied to religion and core values tend to resist change, while attitudes toward trust and cooperation shift more readily. Giuliano traces persistent norms to three broad sources: preindustrial social structures, geography and environment, and major historical shocks.

Old Habits Collide With the Modern World

Plough-based farming dating to preindustrial society continues to cast a long shadow. Because using the plough required significant upper-body strength, men did most of the fieldwork, while women took on domestic roles. This division of labor made sense at the time. But even after technological change made physical strength less relevant, the pattern persisted — evolving into a broader belief about women’s place in the economy.

Research has documented that regions with a long history of plough agriculture still show lower rates of female workforce participation, less female entrepreneurship and weaker support for women working outside the home — even where physical strength no longer matters. Giuliano collaborated on research documenting the modern-day impact of plough society gender roles, including how it continues to shape the beliefs of immigrant children in the United States and Europe with ties to plough-based cultures. The plough is gone. The norm it generated is not.

A tradition shaped by geography can be seen in African regions affected by the tsetse fly. Because the insect transmitted deadly disease to livestock, communities remained small and insular. People avoided trade and interaction with outsiders to protect their animals (small herds protect livestock from infection but at the cost of economies of scale).

While modern medicine has greatly reduced the original threat, the social patterns it produced — tight-knit communities and limited trust in outsiders — have persisted. What began as a practical response to environmental risk became a durable cultural habit that research shows has limited economic development and innovation, and now imposes real costs by restricting cooperation, market integration and adaptation to new opportunities

Behind Distrust of the Medical System

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study offers a stark example of how a historical shock can reverberate across generations. From 1932 to 1972, the U.S. government ran a medical experiment in which Black men with syphilis were deliberately left untreated so researchers could observe the disease’s progression. When the study was exposed, it created a deep and lasting mistrust of the medical system among African Americans, particularly those living near Tuskegee. Research shows that Black men, particularly those living closer to Tuskegee, continue to show lower rates of health care use — a legacy of mistrust that has contributed to measurably higher mortality rates. 

While all of this helps explain why seemingly outmoded behaviors persist, Giuliano is clear that the problem is not intractable. What’s needed is conscious attention to how ancestral norms may get in the way. Programs or policies aimed at helping a group can’t ignore cultural norms or try to work around them — they need to directly address them.

That’s what researchers did in Saudi Arabia. The country has long had low rates of female employment, often linked to religious and conservative traditions. Yet when 500 college-educated married men in Riyadh were surveyed, many privately supported the idea of their wives working outside the home. But most of these men believed their male peers weren’t as open to the idea. This misperception — tied to a powerful cultural norm — created a barrier to getting more women working, as husbands worried about going against what they perceived was a popular social norm.

Then researchers provided some of these men with accurate information that showed many of their peers also supported women working. Nearly one-third of men who learned their support was more common than they thought signed their wives up for an online job platform, compared with just 23% in the control group. Five months later, the wives of men who received this information were nearly three times as likely to have applied for a job (16.2% versus 5.8%), and five times as likely to have landed a job interview (5.8% versus 1.1%).

A study of school construction programs in Indonesia and Zambia provides more insight on how cultural norms can drive public policy effectiveness. In some ethnic communities in both countries, it remains custom for a groom’s family to pay a “bride price” to the family of their future daughter-in-law. Where there’s also an understanding that an educated wife can contribute more to the household’s financial security, the construction of new schools was seen as an opportunity. 

Families in these communities responded by sending more girls to school, knowing that education could enhance their daughters’ prospects as a future spouse and benefit the family in the long run. In communities without the bride price tradition, or where education wasn’t seen as adding value to a future wife, the same school-building programs had far less impact on girls’ enrollment. 

Giuliano makes a clear case that even the best-intentioned policies can miss the mark if they ignore the cultural currents running beneath the surface. Programs built with a real understanding of the traditions, histories and habits that shape people’s choices have a much better shot at actually helping the intended audience. It’s not about fighting the past, but about understanding it well enough to build programs that actually help people benefit from the modern world.