This blog site collects all extensive publications (reading time > 2 min).
Escalation of commitment is the tendency to invest additional resources in an apparently losing investment, influenced by effort, money and time already invested. If the costs outweigh the benefits, the extra costs incurred are held in a different mental account than the one associated with the first investment. To visualize this fallacy let us use…
This is the final article in the Neurolaw November series. If you have not yet done so, I highly recommend that you read the Introduction to Neurolaws written by my colleague Maureen Jacob, as well as the other parts in the series. As described well in her article, the foundation of Neurolaws is a simple…
At the beginning, millions of years ago, bacteria were swallowing mitochondria. This small neighbor was not digested, however. Instead, the bacterium eventually evolved to live in a symbiotic relationship with its mitochondrial counterpart. The bacterium managed life, locomotion, food intake and more, while the mitochondria ensured that there was always plenty of energy available. This…
Imagine a world in which nobody is lying. A world in which no one has ever lied and will never lie. Which problems would emerge? How would life change? There would indeed be fundamental changes. Let us consider an example often used in criminal law classes: A husband whose wife falls in love with another…
This is the second part of our Neurolaw reading series. You can find the first part HERE. Humans are first and foremost animals – even though we tend to deny that. Animals with morality, guided by the norms of their group and their feelings. We follow the guiding principles of our society which, for example,…
We recently mentioned in our Rational Roundup the Nobel Prize won by Prof. Richard Thaler. One of Richard Thaler’s key contributions to behavioral economics – and a reason for an increasing awareness of the latter as a field of research from the early 1980s onwards – is his work on what he labeled the endowment…
Imagine an auction for a dollar and the person with the highest bid gets the dollar. However, not only the person with the highest bid must pay the price, also the person with the second highest bid must make a payment. The auction starts at one cent and you will see the price increasing up…
In the light of the German federal election approaching we decided to repost this thought provoking article. Learn how social bots influence your rational decision-making – and if you are one of our many German followers, this might be especially interesting for you. Building on our previous posts on artificial intelligence, this week’s publication will have…
A few months ago, I published a #30in30 regarding the hindsight bias. As I promised, during this essay, I will give you more information on the impacts on the legal profession as well as on debiasing this classic behavioral bias. This article will be a thorough introduction. Hence, there is no need to read the…
Anchoring is a cognitive effect with utmost importance to legal professionals’ work. Its applicability ranges from mediation to negotiation to court trials. Almost every legal professional will discover its impact on his own daily work. Research shows, that especially legal professionals are not immune but rather prone to the anchoring effect. Hence, this article will…