Experimental Psychology and the Law

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tess Wilkinson-Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Dispute Resolution ◽  
Real World ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Compensation Contracts ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Legal Questions ◽  
The Social

Experimental psychology has become an increasingly reliable and available tool for legal scholars the research of which implicates human behaviour and cognition. This article considers areas of legal scholarship that have used experimental psychology in different ways. These areas include tort law and settlement (e.g. assessing fairness, punishment, and compensation); contracts (e.g. assessing the social, moral, and practical meanings of promissory obligations for ordinary people); dispute resolution, intellectual property, and studies on the differential effects of certain manipulations on different cultural sub-groups. Using these areas as case studies, it is possible to unpack the resonances, implications, and limitations of an experimental psychology approach to legal questions. The article concludes with an example of how experimental psychology has been used to uncover and explain a real-world effect, in this case in the bankruptcy context.

Multiple-source Record Linkage in a Rural Industrial Community, 1680–1820

1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve King
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Multiple Source ◽  
Demographic Analysis ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Industrial Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Broad Outline

Re-creating the social, economic and demographic life-cycles of ordinary people is one way in which historians might engage with the complex continuities and changes which underlay the development of early modern communities. Little, however, has been written on the ways in which historians might deploy computers, rather than card indexes, to the task of identifying such life cycles from the jumble of the sources generated by local and national administration. This article suggests that multiple-source linkage is central to historical and demographic analysis, and reviews, in broad outline, some of the procedures adopted in a study which aims at large scale life cycle reconstruction.

Modern Problems of Teaching Disciplines in the Social and Humanitarian Sphere

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Е.Н. Юдина
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
The Real ◽  
Additional Resource ◽  
The Social ◽  
Use Of The Internet

интернет-пространство стало частью реального мира современных студентов. В наши дни особенно актуальна проблема активизации использования интернета как дополнительного ресурса в образовательном процессе. В статье приводятся результаты небольшого социологического исследования, посвященного использованию интернета в преподавании социологических дисциплин. Internet space has become a part of the real world of modern students. The problem of increasing the use of the Internet as an additional resource in the educational process is now particularly topical. The article contains the results of a small sociological study on the use of the Internet in teaching sociological disciplines.

scholarly journals CODIFICATION, CONSOLIDATION, RESTATEMENT? HOW BEST TO SYSTEMISE THE MODERN LAW OF TORT

2021 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-305
Author(s):  
Paula Giliker
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
The Law ◽  
Codal Provisions ◽  
Code Civil

AbstractThe law of tort (or extra or non-contractual liability) has been criticised for being imprecise and lacking coherence. Legal systems have sought to systemise its rules in a number of ways. While civil law systems generally place tort law in a civil code, common law systems have favoured case-law development supported by limited statutory intervention consolidating existing legal rules. In both systems, case law plays a significant role in maintaining the flexibility and adaptability of the law. This article will examine, comparatively, different means of systemising the law of tort, contrasting civil law codification (taking the example of recent French proposals to update the tort provisions of the Code civil) with common law statutory consolidation and case-law intervention (using examples taken from English and Australian law). In examining the degree to which these formal means of systemisation are capable of improving the accessibility, intelligibility, clarity and predictability of the law of tort, it will also address the role played by informal sources, be they ambitious restatements of law or other means. It will be argued that given the nature of tort law, at best, any form of systemisation (be it formal or informal) can only seek to minimise any lack of precision and coherence. However, as this comparative study shows, further steps are needed, both in updating outdated codal provisions and rethinking the type of legal scholarship that might best assist the courts.

What Can Experimental Studies of Bias Tell Us About Real-World Group Disparities?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-82
Author(s):  
Joseph Cesario
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
White Men ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Behavioral Differences ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Systematic Testing ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Research Tradition ◽  
The Social

Abstract This article questions the widespread use of experimental social psychology to understand real-world group disparities. Standard experimental practice is to design studies in which participants make judgments of targets who vary only on the social categories to which they belong. This is typically done under simplified decision landscapes and with untrained decision makers. For example, to understand racial disparities in police shootings, researchers show pictures of armed and unarmed Black and White men to undergraduates and have them press "shoot" and "don't shoot" buttons. Having demonstrated categorical bias under these conditions, researchers then use such findings to claim that real-world disparities are also due to decision-maker bias. I describe three flaws inherent in this approach, flaws which undermine any direct contribution of experimental studies to explaining group disparities. First, the decision landscapes used in experimental studies lack crucial components present in actual decisions (Missing Information Flaw). Second, categorical effects in experimental studies are not interpreted in light of other effects on outcomes, including behavioral differences across groups (Missing Forces Flaw). Third, there is no systematic testing of whether the contingencies required to produce experimental effects are present in real-world decisions (Missing Contingencies Flaw). I apply this analysis to three research topics to illustrate the scope of the problem. I discuss how this research tradition has skewed our understanding of the human mind within and beyond the discipline and how results from experimental studies of bias are generally misunderstood. I conclude by arguing that the current research tradition should be abandoned.

scholarly journals Treating Wrongs as Wrongs: An Expressive Argument for Tort Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Hershovitz
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Tort Reform ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
Social Standing ◽  
Tort Liability ◽  
Criminal Punishment ◽  
Expressive Function ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe idea that criminal punishment carries a message of condemnation is as commonplace as could be. Indeed, many think that condemnation is the mark of punishment, distinguishing it from other sorts of penalties or burdens. But for all that torts and crimes share in common, nearly no one thinks that tort has similar expressive aims. And that is unfortunate, as the truth is that tort is very much an expressive institution, with messages to send that are different, but no less important, than those conveyed by the criminal law. In this essay, I argue that tort liability expresses the judgment that the defendant wronged the plaintiff. And I explain why it is important to have an institution that expresses that judgment. I argue that we need ways of treating wrongs as wrongs, so that we can vindicate the social standing of victims. Along the way, I consider the continuity between tort and revenge, and I suggest a new way of thinking about corrective justice and the role that tort plays in dispensing it. I conclude by sketching an agenda for tort reform that would improve tort’s ability to serve its expressive function.

Wittgenstein’s philosophy and action research

2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Shotter
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Social Isolation ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
Participatory Culture ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Social ◽  
Professional Research ◽  
The Many

Three themes seem to be common to both Greenwood’s and Gustavsen’s accounts: One is the social isolation of professional [research] elites from the concerns of ordinary people, which connects with another: the privileging of theory over practice. Both of these are connected, however, with a third: the great, unresolved struggle of ordinary people to gain control over their own lives, to escape from schemes imposed on them by powerful elites, and to build a genuinely participatory culture. An understanding of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, and the recognition of its striking differences from any previous philosophical works, can make some important contributions to all these issues. Wittgenstein’s aim is not, by the use of reason and argument, to establish any foundational principles to do with the nature of knowledge, perception, the structure of our world, scientific method, etc. Instead, he is concerned to inquire into the actual ways available to us of possibly making sense in the many different practical activities we share in our everyday lives together: “We are not seeking to discover anything entirely new, only what is already in plain view.”

The Entextualization of Ayurveda as Intellectual Property

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Wolfgram
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Linguistic Anthropology ◽  
Medical Discourse ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThis article documents the practices of pharmaceutical creativity in Ayurveda, focusing in particular on how practitioners appropriate multiple sources to innovate medical knowledge. Drawing on research in linguistic anthropology on the social circulation of discourse—a process calledentextualization—I describe how the ways in which Ayurveda practitioners innovate medical knowledge confounds the dichotomous logic of intellectual property (IP) rights discourse, which opposes traditional collective knowledge and modern individual innovation. While it is clear that these categories do not comprehend the complex nature of creativity in Ayurveda, I also use the concept of entextualization to describe how recent historical shifts in the circulation of discourse have caused a partial entailment of this opposition between the individual and the collectivity. Ultimately, I argue that the method exemplified in this article of tracking the social circulation of medical discourse highlights both the empirical complexity of so-called traditional creativity, and the politics of imposing the categories of IP rights discourse upon that creativity, situated as it often is, at the margins of the global economy.

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