Intrinsic and Extrinsic Compliance Motivations: Comment on Feldman

The author discusses extrinsic and intrinsic compliance motivations. She focuses on an essay by Yuval Feldman which claims that extrinsic motivation potentially acts in concert with or undermines intrinsic motivation. She also notes that deeper considerations for multiple motivations can add nuance and accuracy to the understanding of litigant behavior

Vengeance, Forgivness, Resentment, Jurisprudence, Dispute Resolution

Vengeance is generally accompanied by the moral emotion of resentment and indignation, which are also natural psychological reactions. We can and do give these emotions cognitive content, inasmuch as they have developed and matured over time with culture, but they are primitive. They arise when an individual suffers a non-trivial injury that was inflicted without excuse or justification. Among other injuries suffered, the harm done discounts the value we hold of ourselves as human beings, so that when this discounting (the crime or a substantial tort) occurs and we react defensively; our worth as an individual feels threatened. We hope then to impose punishment. Forgiveness comes later, if ever. Though it is owed to no one, it seems to reflect an effort to deal with these basic, adaptive reactions. I believe that, at least sometimes, some among us can accept the compromised conditions necessary to grant forgiveness with sufficient compassion and humility to justify this generosity. Ironically, the ability to forgive could rest on principles of utility that respect these retributive emotions; we might call it a kind of enlightened utilitarianism with a dash of teleology

It\u27s Complicated: Reflections on Teaching Negotiation for Women

The role of gender in a negotiation – it’s complicated. This Article highlights the author’s approach to teaching courses focused on gender and negotiation. This approach begins by explaining the structure of negotiation along with basic theories and tactics. After this, the course focuses on the role of gender in negotiation, including gender pay disparities and the efforts to empower women to negotiate. Then, the course moves to data about how well women perform in negotiation and stereotypes of women in negotiations. Ultimately, the class ends with a reminder that those in positions of power must keep an eye to fairness if change of the mentioned inequities is to occur

Social Value Orientation and the Law

Social value orientation is a psychological trait defined as an individual’s natural preference with respect to the allocation of resources. Law and economics scholarship takes as its starting point the rational actor, who is by definition interested solely in maximizing her own personal utility. But social psychology research demonstrates that, in study after study, approximately half of individuals demonstrate a “prosocial” orientation, meaning that they are interested in maximizing the total outcome of the group and are dedicated to an equal split of resources. Only around a quarter of individuals identify as “proself” individualists who prefer to maximize their own outcome per the rational actor model, and members of yet another, smaller group identify as “proself” competitors who want to maximize the relative difference between their own and others’ outcomes. This Article presents social psychologists’ findings regarding the nature of social value orientation and the role that it plays in guiding behavior. It then assesses legal theory and doctrine through the lens of social value orientation in several discrete substantive areas—contract law, corporate law, and family law—as well as in legal procedure and process, showing that “proself” and “prosocial” categories offer a meaningful and helpful way of understanding current doctrine and its effects on behavior. A consideration of social value orientation provides an important, empirical counterbalance to the rationality assumptions of law and economics, helping to show that personal utility maximization neither consistently guides the development of legal doctrine nor dictates human behavior in response to the law. In addition, taking social value orientation seriously suggests insights for the very nature of the relationship between law and human behavior, implicating “nudges,” the potential “crowding out” effect of laws that invoke extrinsic motivation, and the ultimate character of human utility

The Problems with Blaming

This work examines the social practice of blaming, beginning with a prominent view of the moral philosophy of blaming, the semantics of character that support this (and related) views, and the social and cultural biases we bring to the process of attributing blame. Our penchant for blaming is too often manifest in a hyper-willingness to attribute wrongdoing solely to the character of the wrongdoer, often overlooking the salience of the varied situations in which the wrongdoer finds himself. I synthesize the wealth of data, mostly from social psychology, showing that blaming actualizes our own dispositions for over-emphasizing the actor’s wicked disposition to doing wrong in a process that, on balance, fails to serve our long term goal of providing a safer society for ourselves and our children. Finally, I address the role of blaming as part of the paradox of evil, and present an outline for a different approach

An Essay on Vengeance and Forgiveness

Vengeance is generally accompanied by the moral emotion of resentment and indignation, which are also natural psychological reactions. We can and do give these emotions cognitive content, inasmuch as they have developed and matured over time with culture, but they are primitive. They arise when an individual suffers a non-trivial injury that was inflicted without excuse or justification. Among other injuries suffered, the harm done discounts the value we hold of ourselves as human beings, so that when this discounting (the crime or a substantial tort) occurs and we react defensively; our worth as an individual feels threatened. We hope then to impose punishment. Forgiveness comes later, if ever. Though it is owed to no one, it seems to reflect an effort to deal with these basic, adaptive reactions. I believe that, at least sometimes, some among us can accept the compromised conditions necessary to grant forgiveness with sufficient compassion and humility to justify this generosity. Ironically, the ability to forgive could rest on principles of utility that respect these retributive emotions; we might call it a kind of enlightened utilitarianism with a dash of teleology

It’s Complicated: Reflections on Teaching Negotiation for Women

What does it mean to be a woman negotiator? In the two decades that I have been teaching negotiation, I have encountered a wide range of human behavior in the negotiation setting. Individuals run the gamut in terms of their strategies, tactics, worldviews, charisma, perspicacity, flexibility, and other factors that affect negotiation behavior and negotiation outcomes. But one area that negotiation students are always curious about—be they top executives, law students, government employees, lawyers, or doctors—is the role of gender in negotiation. The maddening but intriguing answer to this question is the same as the answer to many other questions about negotiation: it’s complicated. The most important quality of negotiation is its dynamic and fluid nature, each encounter completely unique to its own participants and its own contexts, yet always with the possibility of analysis along a set of identifiable dimensions