The Behavioral Code: The Hidden Ways the Law Makes Us Better . or Worse

by Benjamin van Rooij

When it comes to law and morality, social science provides several key takeaways. First, the law’s influence on human conduct is not simply a matter of amoral rational choice or even amoral irrational choice. It is deeply ingrained in the way people deliberate about, intuitively respond to, or repress morality. Clearly, people’s personal morals, values, and traits directly impact how people respond to the law. As Bar-Ilan University law professor Yuval Feldman explains in his book The Law of Good People, for law to improve behavior it must address morality, and to do so the law must make it impossible for people to feel moral when breaking the law.77 A second core insight is that the law works best when it is aligned with the morals people already have or when it can convince people that it provides the only moral route forward. Inversely, legal rules that seek to prevent people from engaging in behavior that is widely perceived to be morally acceptable are almost destined to fail. At the same time, the law must recognize that people have only a limited capacity for ethical reasoning, and that they may not be able to weigh the morality of violating rules, either before or after the fact. To overcome this, authorities must use insights from behavioral ethics to nudge people toward engaging in more deliberate, ethical decision-making. The final insight concerns people who exhibit serious, clinically diagnosed psychiatric disorders or high levels of callous-unemotional or psy...