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Cognitive
The Evil Eye: Eye Gaze and Competitiveness in Social Decision Making
May 9, 2018
We demonstrate that a person’s eye gaze and his/her competitiveness are closely intertwined in social decision making....
May 9, 2018
We demonstrate that a person’s eye gaze and his/her competitiveness are closely intertwined in social decision making....
3 Moves made by Masterful Mediators & Street Fighters
May 8, 2018
This then, is the first move – preparation. Whenever I observe my mentor and friend, Associate Professor Joel Lee, teach or train mediation at the National University of Singapore, or in his capacity as an Affiliate Partner with CMPartners, I will always remember his emphasis on preparation. Good preparation is about knowing one’s strengths and weaknesses; where likely points of conflict will arise and how we plan ahead what moves we will make to deal with them. The second move is framing. It...
May 8, 2018
This then, is the first move – preparation. Whenever I observe my mentor and friend, Associate Professor Joel Lee, teach or train mediation at the National University of Singapore, or in his capacity as an Affiliate Partner with CMPartners, I will always remember his emphasis on preparation. Good preparation is about knowing one’s strengths and weaknesses; where likely points of conflict will arise and how we plan ahead what moves we will make to deal with them. The second move is framing. It...
Happiness Up To A Point!
May 8, 2018
Lawsuits are often about money. And the plaintiff often thinks that if she wins and gets all this money- she will be quite happy. And conversely, a defendant thinks that if she wins, she will save a whole lot of money which will make her happy! Well… as one might suspect, these aspirations are not quite realistic. A recent study indicates that money can buy us all happiness… but only up to a point. In a post on LiveScience.com dated February 14, 2018, entitled “How much Money Would It Take...
May 8, 2018
Lawsuits are often about money. And the plaintiff often thinks that if she wins and gets all this money- she will be quite happy. And conversely, a defendant thinks that if she wins, she will save a whole lot of money which will make her happy! Well… as one might suspect, these aspirations are not quite realistic. A recent study indicates that money can buy us all happiness… but only up to a point. In a post on LiveScience.com dated February 14, 2018, entitled “How much Money Would It Take...
Sherwin on the Rationality of Promising
May 4, 2018
Emily L. Sherwin (Cornell University - Law School) has posted The Rationality of Promising (J.L. & Publ. Pol’y (Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This essay first examines various conceptions of promissory obligation, which suggest a range of possible benefits associated with promising. Theories of temporally extended practical rationality suggest that to obtain benefits of this kind, it may be rational for a promisor to treat his or her promise as binding. The difficulty is that,...
May 4, 2018
Emily L. Sherwin (Cornell University - Law School) has posted The Rationality of Promising (J.L. & Publ. Pol’y (Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This essay first examines various conceptions of promissory obligation, which suggest a range of possible benefits associated with promising. Theories of temporally extended practical rationality suggest that to obtain benefits of this kind, it may be rational for a promisor to treat his or her promise as binding. The difficulty is that,...
The Law and Big Data
May 3, 2018
To illustrate Big Data’s potentially pervasive effects, examples can be drawn from many legal perspectives, including civil litigants and banking regulators. For example, there are several ways in which law can be “personalized” using Big Data. The personalized law business model would involve synthesizing large amounts of data regarding the course and resolution of all manner of legal issues. Sophisticated predictive analytic software would be used to analyze data and compare it to the facts...
May 3, 2018
To illustrate Big Data’s potentially pervasive effects, examples can be drawn from many legal perspectives, including civil litigants and banking regulators. For example, there are several ways in which law can be “personalized” using Big Data. The personalized law business model would involve synthesizing large amounts of data regarding the course and resolution of all manner of legal issues. Sophisticated predictive analytic software would be used to analyze data and compare it to the facts...
Statutory Interpretation on the Bench: A Survey of Forty-Two Judges on the Federal Courts of Appeals
May 2, 2018
This Article reports the results of a survey of a diverse group of forty-two federal appellate judges concerning their approaches to statutory interpretation. The study reveals important differences between their approaches and the approach that the Supreme Court purports to take. It also helps to substantiate the irrelevance of the enduring, but now-boring, textualism-versus-purposivism debate. None of the judges we interviewed was willing to associate himself or herself with “textualism” without...
May 2, 2018
This Article reports the results of a survey of a diverse group of forty-two federal appellate judges concerning their approaches to statutory interpretation. The study reveals important differences between their approaches and the approach that the Supreme Court purports to take. It also helps to substantiate the irrelevance of the enduring, but now-boring, textualism-versus-purposivism debate. None of the judges we interviewed was willing to associate himself or herself with “textualism” without...
Informed Decision-Making in Judicial Mediation and the Assessment of Litigation Risk
May 2, 2018
While much has been written about how mediators can guide parties through impasse, the popular literature is less attentive...
May 2, 2018
While much has been written about how mediators can guide parties through impasse, the popular literature is less attentive...
This Is What Psychopaths Want At Any Cost
April 29, 2018
The psychopathic brain is wired to go after rewards, whatever the cost, a neuroscience study finds. The brains of psychopaths release four times as much dopamine in response to rewards as normal people. Imagine how much more pleasure they get from taking whatever they want.
April 29, 2018
The psychopathic brain is wired to go after rewards, whatever the cost, a neuroscience study finds. The brains of psychopaths release four times as much dopamine in response to rewards as normal people. Imagine how much more pleasure they get from taking whatever they want.
Lawyer Is America’s Loneliest Profesion
April 29, 2018
In a breakdown of loneliness and social support rates by profession, legal practice was the loneliest kind of work, followed by engineering and science. This is perhaps not surprising, given the known high prevalence of depression among lawyers. At the other end of the spectrum were occupations involving high degrees of social interaction: social work, marketing, and sales. ... The solitude of the ivory tower seems to be a real phenomenon, as well. Graduate degree holders in our sample reported...
April 29, 2018
In a breakdown of loneliness and social support rates by profession, legal practice was the loneliest kind of work, followed by engineering and science. This is perhaps not surprising, given the known high prevalence of depression among lawyers. At the other end of the spectrum were occupations involving high degrees of social interaction: social work, marketing, and sales. ... The solitude of the ivory tower seems to be a real phenomenon, as well. Graduate degree holders in our sample reported...
Cognitive Biases and Risk Management
April 26, 2018
Research also detected that risk perceptions are influenced by the emotional state of the perceiver (Bodenhausen, 1993). According to valence theory, positive emotions lead to optimistic risk perceptions whereas negative emotions incite a more pessimistic view of risk (Lerner, 2000). The earliest psychometric research was performed by psychologists Daniel Kahneman (who later won a Nobel Prize in economics with Vernon Smith “for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic...
April 26, 2018
Research also detected that risk perceptions are influenced by the emotional state of the perceiver (Bodenhausen, 1993). According to valence theory, positive emotions lead to optimistic risk perceptions whereas negative emotions incite a more pessimistic view of risk (Lerner, 2000). The earliest psychometric research was performed by psychologists Daniel Kahneman (who later won a Nobel Prize in economics with Vernon Smith “for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic...
