Law Commons^™

The Evolution Of Irrationality, Owen D. Jones

Owen Jones

The place of the rational actor model in the analysis of individual and social behavior relevant to law remains unresolved. In recent years, scholars have sought frameworks to explain: a) disjunctions between seemingly rational behavior and seemingly irrational behavior; b) the origins of and influences on law-relevant preferences, and c) the nonrandom development of norms. This Article explains two components of an evolutionary framework that, building from accessible insights of behavioral biology, can encompass all three. The components are: "time-shifted rationality" and "the law of law's leverage."

Law, Evolution, And The Brain: Applications And Open Questions, Owen D. Jones

Owen Jones

This essay discusses several issues at the intersection of law and brain science. If focuses principally on ways in which an improved understanding of how evolutionary processes affect brain function and human behavior may improve law's ability to regulate behavior. It explores sample uses of such "evolutionary analysis in law" and also raises questions about how that analysis might be improved in the future. Among the discussed uses are: 1) clarifying cost-benefit analyses; 2) providing theoretical foundation and potential predictive power; 3) assessing comparative effectiveness of legal strategies; and 4) revealing deep patterns in legal architecture. Throughout, the essay emphasizes …

Endowment Effects In Chimpanzees, Owen D. Jones, Sarah F. Brosnan, Susan P. Lambeth, Mary Catherine Mareno, Amanda S. Richardson, Steven Schapiro

Owen Jones

Human behavior is not always consistent with standard rational choice predictions. The much-investigated variety of apparent deviations from rational choice predictions provides a promising arena for the merger of economics and biology. Although little is known about the extent to which other species also exhibit these seemingly irrational patterns of human decision-making and choice behavior, similarities across species would suggest a common evolutionary root to the phenomena.

The present study investigated whether chimpanzees exhibit an endowment effect, a seemingly paradoxical behavior in which humans tend to value a good they have just come to possess more than they would have …

Evolution And The Expression Of Biases: Situational Value Changes The Endowment Effect In Chimpanzees, Owen D. Jones, Sarah F. Brosnan, Molly Gardner, Susan P. Lambeth, Steven J. Schapiro

Owen Jones

Cognitive and behavioral biases, which are widespread among humans, have recently been demonstrated in other primates, suggesting a common origin. Here we examine whether the expression of one shared bias, the endowment effect, varies as a function of context. We tested whether objects lacking inherent value elicited a stronger endowment effect (or preference for keeping the object) in a context in which the objects had immediate instrumental value for obtaining valuable resources (food). Chimpanzee subjects had opportunities to trade tools when food was not present, visible but unobtainable, and obtainable using the tools. We found that the endowment effect for …

Proprioception, Non-Law, And Biolegal History, Owen D. Jones

Owen Jones

This Article explores several advantages of incorporating into law various insights from behavioral biology about how and why the brain works as it does. In particular, the Article explores the ways in which those insights can help illuminate the deep structure of human legal systems. That effort is termed "biolegal history."

Law, Biology, And Property: A New Theory Of The Endowment Effect, Owen D. Jones, Sarah F. Brosnan

Owen Jones

Recent work at the intersection of law and behavioral biology has suggested numerous contexts in which legal thinking could benefit by integrating knowledge from behavioral biology. In one of those contexts, behavioral biology may help to provide theoretical foundation for, and potentially increased predictive power concerning, various psychological traits relevant to law. This Article describes an experiment that explores that context.

The paradoxical psychological bias known as the endowment effect puzzles economists, skews market behavior, impedes efficient exchange of goods and rights, and thereby poses important problems for law. Although the effect is known to vary widely, there are at …

Intuitions Of Punishment, Owen D. Jones, Robert Kurzban

Owen Jones

Recent work reveals, contrary to wide-spread assumptions, remarkably high levels of agreement about how to rank order, by blameworthiness, wrongs that involve physical harms, takings of property, or deception in exchanges. In The Origins of Shared Intuitions of Justice (http://ssrn.com/abstract=952726) we proposed a new explanation for these unexpectedly high levels of agreement.

Elsewhere in this issue, Professors Braman, Kahan, and Hoffman offer a critique of our views, to which we reply here. Our reply clarifies a number of important issues, such as the interconnected roles that culture, variation, and evolutionary processes play in generating intuitions of punishment.