Law is our most important system to regulate human behavior and prevent and reduce misconduct. Yet, lawyers who design and operate the legal system do not receive training in behavioral science. The ERC-funded project seeks to develop a behavioral jurisprudence that corrects flawed assumptions about behaviour in our legal system and that enables a better adoption of empirical insights about human conduct into legal design and theory.
Click below to read more about the research, meet the project team, and see the latest publications.
Click below to read more about the research, meet the project team, and see the latest publications.
Research Worth Sharing
Book Release: The Cambridge Handbook of Compliance
Cambridge University Press has just published The Cambridge Handbook of Compliance (edited by Benjamin van Rooij and D. Daniel Sokol).
While there is a rich body of empirical and practical expertise on compliance, thus far, there has been no comprehensive understanding of what compliance is or how it influences various fields and sectors. The academic knowledge of compliance has remained siloed along different disciplinary domains, regulatory and legal spheres, and mechanisms and interventions. This handbook bridges these divides to provide the first one-stop overview of what compliance is, how we can best study it, and the core mechanisms that shape it. Written by leading experts, its 69 chapters offer perspectives from across law, regulatory studies, management science, criminology, economics, sociology, and psychology. This volume is the definitive and comprehensive account of compliance.
‘This Handbook is an indispensable resource for academics and practitioners interested in compliance and ethics. The book assembles an impressive array of leading experts who tackle critical issues from a variety of perspectives. It is essential reading for those interested in controlling organizational misconduct.’
Jennifer Arlen – New York University School of Law, editor of The Research Handbook on Corporate Crime and Financial Misdealing
‘This Handbook is a gold mine for those serious about comprehending the complexities of compliance in building more effective governance and more decent, less dominating, societies.’
John Braithwaite – RegNet, Australia National University, author of Responsive Regulation and Crime, Shame and Integration
‘It turns out there is a solid ‘science of compliance,’ and it is represented instructively in this thoroughgoing volume.’
Robert Cialdini – Psychology and Marketing, Arizona State University, author of Influence and Pre-suasion
‘Utilizing a broad brush in thinking about compliance, van Rooij and Sokol have brought together an interdisciplinary who’s who of thought leaders who tackle essential issues of conceptualization, operationalization and measurement, and the mechanisms that shape compliance.’
Sally S. Simpson – Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, author of Corporate Crime, Law, and Social Control
Book Release: The Behavioral Code: The Hidden Ways the Law Makes Us Better...or Worse
Freakonomics for the law–the revolutionary behavioral science insights into how law fails to reduce misbehavior and what we can do about it.
Why do some laws radically change behavior whereas others are consistently ignored and routineley broken? Why doe we keep relying on harsher punishment against crime even though that keeps failing?
Drawing upong decades of research, the authors reveal the behavioral code: the root causes and hidden forces that drive human behavior and our responses to society’s laws. The book offers a fundamentally different approach to crime and injustice that is based in empirical science–rather than relying just on false intuitions.
The Behavioral Code shows that the law can only be effective if it moves beyond traditional sticks and carrots. In this authoritative book on law and human behavior, the authors explore the role of the behavioral code through engaging and unexpected examples, including:
- President George H. W. Bush’s service dog, which demonstrates alternative therapies for violent crime
- Tennis star Maria Sharapova’s doping experience, which teaches us why we must ensure that people have the capacity to follow the law
- A $2.3 billion Pfizer legal settlement which reveals that creating intuitively appealing programs like whistleblower protections will fail at reducing rampant corporate malfeasance
- An averted terrorist attack more than twice the size of 9/11 that shows how simple interventions grounded in the opportunity approach can effectively prevent harm
Highly entertaining and counterintuitive, The Behavioral Code catalyzes the conversation about how the law can respond to some of our most pressing issues today, including violent crime, police misconduct, environmental degradation, corporate crime, and pandemic mitigation.
“If you’ve ever dreamed of a legal system that’s informed by behavioral science, this book could very well move us one step closer to making your dream a reality.”
—Adam Grant, author of New York Times #1 bestseller Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife
“In an engaging, scientifically grounded fashion, van Rooij and Fine expertly link the findings of behavioral science with evidence of how people respond to laws, regulations, and legal sanctions. An excellent and urgent reminder of how behavioral science is essential to our understanding of law.”
—Robert B. Cialdini, author of Influence and Pre-Suasion
“Accessible, timely, and compelling, The Behavioral Code explores the vast literature concerning punishment and provides a blueprint for reforming the criminal justice system—one where we can better understand just how effective our laws may or may not be. A surprisingly refreshing read.”
—Erwin Chemerinsky, dean, UC Berkeley School of Law, and author of The Case Against the Supreme Court
“The Behavioral Code convincingly concludes that building more prisons does not work; what does is reducing poverty and building motivation for, and pathways to, compliance within fair legal institutions.”
—John Braithwaite, emeritus professor, Australian National University
“This book draws on a broad swathe of behavioral research, and is essential reading for anyone who assumes either that rules are necessarily the best way to alter behavior, or that compliance follows automatically.”
—Malcolm K. Sparrow, Professor of the Practice of Public Management,Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
“Irrespective of whether the issue is wearing a face mask, complying with a police request, or accepting the results of an election, the ability to motivate people to follow rules is central to the viability of our own, or any other society. But why do people follow or break rules? Anyone interested in knowing will benefit from reading The Behavioral Code. An engagingly written, timely, and compelling read.”
——Tom Tyler, Macklin Fleming Professor of Law and professor of psychology, Yale University
“Most books about the American criminal justice system show how deeply unjust and biased it is. The Behavioral Code reveals a startling truth: it actually fails to fight crime. Offering a witty and accessible tour de force of the science of crime, this must-read book shows us how to reduce our reliance on brutal punishment and build a more humane and effective justice system that can actually protect us.”
—L. Song Richardson, president, Colorado College
“Sometimes we follow the law, and sometimes we don’t—but why do we pick and choose which rules are worth following? Van Rooij and Fine tackle this complex question by using our contemporary understanding of behavioral ethics to predict human responses to laws. Through fresh and fascinating analysis, The Behavioral Code has the potential to lead policymakers to make wiser decisions to pass laws that make the most sense given how humans actually behave.”
—Max H. Bazerman, author of Better, Not Perfect and Blind Spots
“The Behavioral Code is a fantastically engaging look at how legal codes—from how we drive to how we serve food to how we reduce harm—guide every aspect of our lives. Van Rooij and Fine draw on fascinating examples of laws that worked (and ones that failed) to teach us new ways to impact behavior. Anyone who cares about making our society a safer place should read this book.”
—Elizabeth F. Loftus, former president, Association for Psychological
“The Behavioral Code is a marvelous book full of striking stories and insightful science that help us see the law through a different lens—what difference it makes in everyday life, and how it can and must do better.”
—Christine Parker, professor, Melbourne Law School
“In this volume, Van Rooij and Fine develop a persuasive and compelling argument—engaging the reader in a provocative dialogue about behavioral jurisprudence. For law to successfully shape human behavior, mitigate unwanted and dangerous conduct, and achieve social good, it must mutually engage with empirical social science. The Behavioral Code is readily accessible to both scholars and the general public and will change the way you think. This is interdisciplinary integration at its very best.”
—Sally S. Simpson, past president, American Society of Criminology
“The law is an embarrassment for its failure to account for the facts about how or whether its rules actually work. This brilliant and foundational text, beautifully written and compelling, will launch a long-needed movement for a much more empirically based and practically focused approach to the many critical dimensions of regulation that the law must advance. The current system is deeply unjust; this book points a clear way to making it much more just.”
—Lawrence Lessig, Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership, Harvard Law School
“Laws come in so many flavors: universal versus parochial ones; those obeyed versus those blithely ignored or heroically resisted; bureaucratic nonsense versus laws that save lives or proclaim sacred values. The Behavioral Code explores the factors that shape when people do or don’t obey laws, with writing that is clear, science-based, and even-handed. A highly fascinating book with crucial implications—from the successes and dysfunctions of entire societies to our own everyday behavior.”
–Robert M. Sapolsky, author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
“We all think we understand how the law impacts our choices, but The Behavioral Code shows how that confidence is often deeply misplaced. Van Rooij and Fine’s engaging book offers a blueprint of how we can begin designing laws to create the outcomes we want as a society. A compelling call to action that should be read by all policymakers and regulators.”
—Eugene Soltes, professor, Harvard Business School, and author of Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal
“The Behavioral Code illuminates how laws infiltrate our daily lives in diverse and often unrecognized ways, nudging us to make good and not-so-good decisions. With research informed but enlivened by real-world accounts, this work unlocks the secrets to using the law to advance the commonweal. When damaging conduct must be curtailed, a key lesson is to resist emotionally appealing but counterproductive punitive intuitions in favor of a behavioral code that guides us in creating motivations and constructing situations that evoke our better angels. This is a book to be studied carefully and then shared with others as a ‘must-read’—but do so with the proviso that the volume be returned so as to occupy a prominent and permanent place in your library.”
—Francis T. Cullen, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus, University of Cincinnati, and past president, American Society of Criminology
“Sometimes we follow the law, and sometimes we don’t—but why do we pick and choose which rules are worth following? Van Rooij and Fine tackle this complex question by using our contemporary understanding of behavioral ethics to predict human responses to laws. Through fresh and fascinating analysis, The Behavioral Code has the potential to lead policymakers to make wiser decisions to pass laws that make the most sense given how humans actually behave.”
—Max H. Bazerman, author of Better, Not Perfect and Blind Spots
“Although we are governed by a massive system of laws and regulations, this is the first book to offer a thoughtful and scholarly discussion of how those laws and regulations actually change our behavior. Van Rooij and Fine provide a master class on the intersection between social science and the law, and their insights will reshape how we think of the law.”
—David DeMatteo, former president, American Psychology-Law Society
“Van Rooij and Fine took it upon themselves to tackle the nearly impossible task of reviewing all the relevant literature on compliance from the fields of psychology, criminology, and law. By summarizing hundreds of studies, weaving in catchy examples, and delivering an insightful and informative guide on the effect of law on behavior, The Behavioral Code is an incredible feat that challenges what we think we know about the law.”
—Yuval Feldman, author of The Law of Good People
“Van Rooij and Fine challenge us to a new mindset, one that tests our theories and intuitions with scientific methods and empirical evidence. Using engaging stories, insightful resources, and practical guidance, this book picks up where the law leaves off for all those who are interested in understanding noncompliant and criminal behaviors.”
—Hui Chen, former compliance counsel expert, US Department of Justice
“The faith of modern societies in the ability of laws to shape behavior by words alone remains astonishingly strong as our Pandemic experience now attests. The Behavioral Code brilliantly decodes a century’s worth of human science to show both how terrifyingly misguided that faith is and what we actually know about how to change behavior. More essential than ever after COVID!”
—Jonathan Simon, Professor of Criminal Justice Law, UC Berkeley, School of Law
Human Risk Podcast with guest Professor Benjamin Van Rooij
Listen to the latest HumanRisk podcast with Christian Hunt and guest Professor Benjamin van Rooij.
In this discussion, Benjamin highlights some of the ways in which the law influences us in ways we might not realise and explores how some traditional ideas about how we can get people to behave in a particular way are flawed – they either don’t work or are counter-productive.
🎧 To listen to the podcast, click here.
Amsterdam Law Hub: Malouke Kuiper
The Amsterdam Law Hub has created a video about our project member Malouke Kuiper and her current research. In this video Kuiper explains how behavioral insights are important to law, and yet in practice, they are not always applied. Her research aims to illuminate this misalignment between law makers’ attempts to influence behavior and our current knowledge of how human behavior actually works based on social science.