Are There Lewis Conventions?

In one of his recent working papers  Francesco Guala asks whether there are Lewis conventions, or not. His answer is: “Lewis Conventions strictly speaking do not exist.” Of course, in order to understand what he really means, you need to read the paper. And you are advised to do so if you are interested in conventions, norms, institutions, experimental economics, etc.  You may download the paper by clicking here!

Here, I would like to share with you an interesting comment from the paper. Francesco Guala argues:

“In real life, admittedly, we don’t often interact anonymously with a group of strangers whom we are unlikely ever to meet again. But consider that our anodyne experimental settings are much less likely to create social pressure on the participants, than the sort of situations we face in everyday life. And yet, the intrinsic normativity of conventions can be observed even in these unfavourable conditions. We can only expect the pressure to increase when we play indefinitely repeated games with our family members, friends, and colleagues.”

My question is the following: would the pressure really increase if you play the game in Guala’s experiment with your family members and/or close friends? Think about what you would do while you are reading the paper…