Are There Cross-Cultural Legal Principles? Modal Reasoning Uncovers Procedural Constraints on Law

Despite pervasive variation in the content of laws, legal theorists and anthropologists have argued that laws share certain abstract features and even speculated that law may be a human universal. In the present report, we evaluate this thesis through an experiment administered in 11 different countries. Are there cross-cultural principles of law? In a between-subjects design, participants (N = 3,054) were asked whether there could be laws that violate certain procedural principles (e.g., laws applied retrospectively or unintelligible laws), and also whether there are any such laws. Confirming our preregistered prediction, people reported that such laws cannot exist, but also (paradoxically) that there are such laws. These results document cross-culturally and –linguistically robust beliefs about the concept of law which defy people’s grasp of how legal systems function in practice

Hair Cortisol in Twins : Heritability and Genetic Overlap with Psychological Variables and Stress-System Genes

A. Palotie on työryhmän jäsen.Hair cortisol concentration (HCC) is a promising measure of long-term hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity. Previous research has suggested an association between HCC and psychological variables, and initial studies of inter-individual variance in HCC have implicated genetic factors. However, whether HCC and psychological variables share genetic risk factors remains unclear. The aims of the present twin study were to: (i) assess the heritability of HCC; (ii) estimate the phenotypic and genetic correlation between HPA axis activity and the psychological variables perceived stress, depressive symptoms, and neuroticism; using formal genetic twin models and molecular genetic methods, i.e. polygenic risk scores (PRS). HCC was measured in 671 adolescents and young adults. These included 115 monozygotic and 183 dizygotic twin-pairs. For 432 subjects PRS scores for plasma cortisol, major depression, and neuroticism were calculated using data from large genome wide association studies. The twin model revealed a heritability for HCC of 72%. No significant phenotypic or genetic correlation was found between HCC and the three psychological variables of interest. PRS did not explain variance in HCC. The present data suggest that HCC is highly heritable. However, the data do not support a strong biological link between HCC and any of the investigated psychological variables.Peer reviewe

Legal Professionals Judging Business Valuations and Valuators: The Role of Similarity, Outcome and Gender bias.

In business, many disputes between stakeholders revolve around conflicting views on a business’ valuation (i.e., the present value of a company’s future earnings as determined by a valuator). Consequently, legal professionals are frequently confronted with complex valuation issues. Ideally, these professionals judge valuations solely on the basis of the correct application of the selected valuation method. However, legal professionals are generally not trained to judge an economic valuation on its mathematical and methodological soundness. Therefore, the present experimental study (N = 272) investigates which factors might influence legal professionals’ opinions concerning valuations and valuators. We demonstrate that legal professionals’ judgments of valuations and valuators are affected by (1) the degree of perceived similarity with the valuator (i.e., similarity bias) in the sense that the higher the perceived similarity the more positive the evaluations, (2) the outcome of a deal (i.e., outcome bias) in the sense that valuators are perceived more negatively after a bad deal, and (3) the valuator’s gender (i.e., gender bias) in the sense that male legal professionals have more trust in the ability of a male valuator than that of a female valuator. Implications for theory and legal practice are discussed

Bypassing the gatekeeper : incidental negative cues stimulate choices with negative outcomes

The Theory of Event Coding (TEC) predicts that exposure to affective cues can automatically trigger affectively congruent behaviour due to shared representational codes. An intriguing hypothesis from this theory is that exposure to aversive cues can automatically trigger actions that have previously been learned to result in aversive outcomes. Previous work has indeed found such a compatibility effect on reaction times in forced-choice tasks, but not for action selection in free-choice tasks. Failure to observe this compatibility effect for aversive cues in free choice tasks suggests that control processes aimed at directing behaviour toward positive outcomes may overrule the automatic activation of affectively congruent responses in case of aversive cues. The present study tested whether minimising such control could cause selection of actions that have been learned to result in aversive outcomes. Results showed incidental exposure to aversive cues biased selection of behaviours with learned aversive outcomes over behaviours with positive outcomes, despite a preference to execute the positive- over the negative-outcome actions evidenced by a separate behaviour measurement and self-reports. These results suggest motivational processes to select actions with positive consequences may sometimes be bypassed. Data and Materials: http://doi.org/10.17605/osf.io/ym7qu

Similarity bias in credit decisions for entrepreneurs on the brink of bankruptcy.

For entrepreneurs in financial distress, it is of vital importance that investors and bankers accurately assess the viability of their business, free of unwanted biases that bear no relevance to the assessment of the chance of survival. Despite the prevalence of entrepreneurs facing financial distress, little research has yet investigated the role of cognitive biases in funding decisions in this important context. The current research attends to this issue and investigated whether entrepreneurs who are perceived by a banker as more similar are more likely to receive capital to save their business from bankruptcy than entrepreneurs who are perceived as less similar to the banker. Additionally, we investigated whether similarity bias affected bankers' attributions of what caused the financial distress as well as their perceptions of entrepreneurs' trustworthiness. Using an experimental research design, we found a similarity bias in bankers' causal attributions and trustworthiness judgments, but not in their credit decisions. We contrast our findings with similarity bias research among equity investors and discuss the implications for theory and practice

Are Business Valuators Biased? The First Experimental Study Suggests So

Business valuations of the same company made by different valuators frequently diverge significantly, often resulting in capital destructing disputes. With the goal of increasing valuation fairness and minimizing such disputes, the current research aimed to find an explanation for severely diverging valuation outcomes by investigating the role of cognitive biases in valuations. In two experimental studies, we show that valuators are affected by both anchoring bias and engagement bias (i.e., being affected by a client’s interests when forming judgments, or in this case, conducting valuations). These findings cast doubt on the notion of fair value in business valuations

Rechterlijke motiveringsstijlen en maatschappelijke acceptatie van uitspraken

Discursieve motivering is in de mode. In (delen van) de rechtspraak en rechtswetenschap leeft de gedachte dat discursieve motivering de acceptatie van rechterlijke uitspraken in de maatschappij ten goede komt. In dit onderzoek hebben we onderzocht of, en zo ja, in hoeverre, de gehanteerde motiveringsstijl de maatschappelijke aanvaarding van rechterlijke uitspraken beïnvloedt. Uit onze studie blijkt dat men de invloed van een discursieve motiveringsstijl op de acceptatie van rechtspraak niet dient te overschatten. Dat is een belangrijke nuance in het debat over de wenselijkheid van bepaalde motiveringsstijlen. Vanuit het oogpunt van aanvaardbaarheid van rechtspraak voor de justitiabele is discursieve motivering niet per se noodzakelijk