As a lot of research indicates individuals' behavior is guided by the characteristics of the context which surrounds them. Social conventions, normative expectations, legal regulations, policy incentives play a role when individuals make important decisions in their lives, such as becoming parents, giving up work, caring for others, volunteering, marrying or divorcing.

 

Societies are developing - sometimes slower, sometimes faster. Often, social policies are designed to meet demands in the population, and they are designed to support behavior which is also culturally seen as appropriate. But sometimes, social norms and social policies stand at odds, for instance, when welfare regimes and political frameworks are lagging behind cultural change, or when rapid developments collide with traditional worldviews.

By looking at longer-term trends in such behaviors, by using social reforms, societal crises, or rapid cultural change as "quasi-natural experiments" I try to disentangle cultural and policy influence on individuals' behavior. Such research is at the core of sociological ideas, the idea of agency and structure, the idea of norms and institutions, the micro and the macro-level and their interlinkages (or: the famous Coleman Boat).

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Publications

Bellani, Luna, Ariane Bertogg, Nevena Kulic, and Susanne Strauss. 2024. Does raising awareness about inequality decrease support for school closures? An information treatment survey experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Genus 80, 7 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41118-024-00212-5

 

Bertogg, Ariane. Needs or Obligations? Childcare Policies, Family Norms, and Grandparents’ Labour Market Participation. Journal of European Social Policy, 33(1): 17-33. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/095892872211156

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Klaus Preisner, Franz Neuberger, Ariane Bertogg, Julia Schaub. “Closing the Happiness Gap. The Decline of Gendered Parenthood Norms and the Increase in Parental Life Satisfaction”. Gender & Society, 34(1): 31-55.

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