Honesty among lawyers: Moral character, game framing, and honest disclosures in negotiations

Lawyers have broad discretion in deciding how honestly to behave when negotiating. We propose that lawyers’ choices about whether to disclose information to correct misimpressions by opposing counsel are guided by their moral character and their cognitive framing of negotiation. To investigate this possibility, we surveyed 215 lawyers from across the United States, examining the degree to which honest disclosure is associated with lawyers’ moral character and their tendency to frame negotiation in game-like terms—a construal of negotiation that we label game framing. We hypothesize that the more that lawyers view negotiation through a game frame—that is, the more they view negotiation as an adversarial context with arbitrary and artificial rules—the less honest they will be in situations in which honest disclosure is not mandated by professional rules of conduct. We further hypothesize that lawyers with higher levels of moral character will apply a game frame to negotiation to a lesser degree than will lawyers with lower levels of moral character, and that honesty when negotiating will be higher when lawyers have higher versus lower levels of moral character. Our study results support these hypotheses. This work suggests that focusing on game-like aspects of negotiation can induce a less moral and ethical mindset. To the extent that teaching law students to “think like a lawyer” encourages them to adopt a game frame of negotiation, we can expect such training to reduce the likelihood of honest disclosure.

(Un)Managing Emotions at the Forefront: Stories from Shoreham Picket Line

In this article, I reflect on my experience as an active rank and file member of CUPE 3903, the union representing contract faculty and graduate students at York University in Toronto, Ontario, during the 2018 York University Strike, where I volunteered as a front-line communicator, or “car talker”. Drawing on these experiences, I reflect on the ways in which picketers generally try to (un)manage the emotions of drivers passing through the picket line. My analysis is focused on a particular venue - the Shoreham picket line located at the southwest entrance of the university, and centers around my personal interactions with the drivers crossing the picket line during the morning hours from March 2018 to May 2018. My analysis aims to open up space to discuss the largely overlooked role that the emotions of the public play in shaping the picket line experience. In particular, I provide a multi-directional analysis of the encounters that occurred between the picketers and the general public at the Shoreham picket line during the 2018 strike, highlighting the multiplicity of variables, such as the environment, the pre-existing beliefs of the participants, and expressions of collective anger, which informed these encounters. In doing this, I illuminate the complexity of the intertwined relationship between emotional and cognitive framing, thereby providing a more comprehensive model for understanding the role that emotions play in social movement organizing.

Cognitive framing through political catchwords

The Croatian political scene is undergoing radical changes. Since the 2016 parliamentary election, the left-wing has gradually lost ground. One of the key roles in the political process is played by the media, which influence the voters and their choices. In this paper we analysed written texts collected during the 2016 election campaign. Among the most prominent Croatian newspapers the left-wing Novi list and the right-wing Večernji list are chosen as the focal publications. We conducted a text linguistic analysis of the political catchword (phrase, slogan) and its role in creating the political opinions of voters. The analysis provided data about the verbal, nonverbal and paraverbal text segments. These phenomena were abstracted as communicational-pragmatic and language-stylistic entities which are necessary for the successful cognitive framing of the political opinions of the public. In order to create and frame political opinions, the text producer uses subtle persuasive messages. Furthermore, at the content-related level of the text structure analysis, the communicative intention of the producer is shown, while the text function analysis shows the most common text indicators used to transmit the desired content and identifies a potential persuasive message “hidden” in the words. As a result, the number of catchwords published in line with each newspaper’s own political orientation is slightly higher than that of the other option, which shows that political neutrality is lacking in the Croatian media.

Preregistered Replication of “Affective Flexibility: Evaluative Processing Goals Shape Amygdala Activity”

The human amygdala is sensitive to stimulus characteristics, and growing evidence suggests that it is also responsive to cognitive framing in the form of evaluative goals. To examine whether different evaluations of stimulus characteristics shape amygdala activation, we conducted a preregistered replication of Cunningham, Van Bavel, and Johnsen’s (2008) study demonstrating flexible mapping of amygdala activation to stimulus characteristics, depending on evaluative goals. Participants underwent functional MRI scanning while viewing famous names under three conditions: They were asked to report their overall attitude toward each name, their positive associations only, or their negative associations only. We observed an interaction between condition and rating type, identified as the effect of interest in Cunningham et al. (2008). Specifically, postscan positivity, but not negativity, ratings predicted left amygdala activation when participants were asked to evaluate positive, but not negative, associations with the names. These results provide convergent evidence that cognitive framing, in the form of evaluative goals, can significantly alter whether amygdala activation indexes positivity or negativity.