Collaborative Research: Applying Constraint Satisfaction Models to Legal Reasoning

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AbstractSES-0080375Holyoak, Keith J.University of California - Los AngelesTheories of human reasoning are heavily influenced by a number of assumptions derived from formal accounts of deductive logic. A central assumption of these models is that the flow of inferences is unidirectional. The syllogistic, unidirectional nature of the reasoning processes rules out "reverse" inferences in which a person's conclusions might lead to a change in the evaluation of the premises and evidence. Violations of this assumption are viewed as signs of the frailty of human reasoning. In this project, we explore an alternative conception of reasoning and decision-making, one based on a theoretical paradigm called constraint satisfaction mechanisms. Our preliminary research has shown that reasoning entails bi-directional influences among the participating pieces of evidence, premises and conclusions, and that the changes occur mostly without awareness. This project is a novel attempt to introduce this emerging model of cognition to decision making, particularly in the legal domain. First, we intend to apply it to the issue of evidence integration in the fact-finding phase. We will examine whether the process of evidence integration leads to changes in the evaluation of the individual pieces of evidence. In particular, we will examine cognitive effects on judgments of defendants' mental states, a determination that is crucial to adjudication in tort and criminal law (mens rea). Other studies will examine why decision makers encounter problems with ignoring inadmissible evidence. The making of a decision can be a difficult and daunting task, as is often manifested both before and after the decision is made, yet at the time of making the decision people generally feel confident, even overconfident. In the second part of the project we intend to explore this relationship among pre-decisional conflict, confident decisions, and post-decisional regret. This issue is especially pertinent to the legal domain, since a central feature of legal culture is that decisions are taken very seriously. Contract law, for example, is based on a concept of reliance, and a failure to fulfill an obligation is considered a breach. There is even less flexibility when it comes to adjudication, wherein decisions announced by judges and jurors are treated as virtually immutable. Given the weightiness of the issues and the closeness of the vying positions often involved in legal transactions and disputes, it is important that we gain a better understanding of these seemingly paradoxical phenomena of conflict, confidence and regret.