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Coordination and expertise foster legal textualism
Ivar R. Hannikainen
a,1
, Kevin P. Tobia
b
, Guilherme da F. C. F. de Almeida
c
, Noel Struchiner
d
, Markus Kneer
e
, Piotr Bystranowski
f
,
Vilius Dranseika
f
, Niek Strohmaier
g
, Samantha Bensinger
c
, Kristina Dolinina
h
, Bartosz Janik
i
,Egl
_
e Lauraityt_
e
h
, Michael Laakasuo
j
,
Alice Liefgreen
k
, Ivars Neiders
l
, Maciej Pr
ochnicki
f
, Alejandro Rosas
m
, Jukka Sundvall
j
, and Tomasz
_
Zuradzki
f
Edited by Susan Fiske, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; received April 14, 2022; accepted September 22, 2022
A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a dominant tendency to rely on a rule’slet-
ter over its spirit when deciding which behaviors violate the rule. This tendency varied
markedly across (k=15) countries, owing to variation in the impact of moral appraisals
on judgments of rule violation. Compared with laypeople, legal experts were more
inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether and consequently
exhibited stronger textualist tendencies. Finally, we evaluated a plausible mechanism for
the emergence of textualism: in a two-player coordination game, incentives to coordi-
nate in the absence of communication reinforced participants’adherence to rules’literal
meaning. Together, these studies (total n=5,794) help clarify the origins and allure of
textualism, especially in the law. Within heterogeneous communities in which members
diverge in their moral appraisals involving a rule’s purpose, the rule’s literal meaning
provides a clear focal point—an identifiable point of agreement enabling coordinated
interpretation among citizens, lawmakers, and judges.
moral judgment jlegal decision making jcoordination jcross-cultural research
All 50 US states have passed zero-tolerance alcohol consumption laws, which severely
sanction any person below age 21 who drives with detectable alcohol in their blood-
stream. In most cases, when these circumstances obtain, the purpose that gave rise to
the law—of protecting other road users and saving lives—has also been jeopardized
(1). Yet legal rules fall short of perfect sensitivity and specificity. For instance, a driver
under the influence of a chemically distinct narcotic, such as ecstasy, could pose a larger
threat to road safety. Call this an underinclusion case; the law’s literal formulation fails
to proscribe an act that undermines the law’s spirit. Similarly, some innocuous behav-
iors, such as rinsing with an alcohol-based mouthwash, might result in a positive test
result without elevating the risk of an accident. Call this an overinclusion case; the
law’s letter proscribes an act that in fact complies with its spirit.
When evaluating these acts on moral grounds, it is abundantly clear whose behavior is
worse: we condemn the first agent’s reckless conduct and exonerate the second. This
capacity arises early in development (2), as children abandon the uncritical submission to
authority and autonomously reason about deeper ethical principles (3, 4), and plausibly
implicates outcome-based reasoning over the probability and magnitude of harm (5, 6).
Now consider a different question: which of these behaviors violates zero-tolerance
laws? Is it the first, which jeopardizes the law’s deeper purpose of saving lives (7, 8), or
the second, which conflicts with its literal meaning (9, 10)? By pitting the spirit of the
law against its letter, these atypical and controversial cases have historically inspired sus-
tained litigation (11) and provide a rare window into the cognitive processes that
underlie legal reasoning.
Recent research has established that laypeople view overinclusion cases (proscribed
by the letter of the law) as unlawful, despite their innocuity and compliance with the
law’s spirit (12–14). In turn, they view underinclusion cases (that jeopardize the law’s
aims) as lawful as long as they comply with its letter. A tendency toward textualist
interpretation arises equally in reaction to everyday transgressions of nonlegal rules,
such as a rule that prohibits shoes in the house to foster cleanliness (14). A guest in
muddy socks is considered to abide by the household rule—whereas a guest who tries
on pristine dress shoes is not. This pattern accords with a prevailing stance among legal
theorists (15): as a leading textualist scholar puts it, “texts should be taken at face val-
ue—with no implied extensions of specific texts or exceptions to general ones—even if
the legislation will then have an awkward relationship to the apparent background
intention or purpose that produced it.”((16), p. 428). This emphasis on text prevails
also in the US court system, where textualism has grown to be a dominant theory of
legal interpretation (17). What could lead jurors to disregard their moral reasoning and
prioritize the literal scope of a rule when assessing an act’s legality?
Significance
The transition from deference to
authority to autonomous
reasoning is a major landmark in
moral development. In this light, it
is interesting how citizens and
especially legal experts often heed
the letter of the law in detriment
of their moral standards during
judicial decision making. Despite
substantial cultural variability in
this phenomenon, our study
documented a global tendency
toward such “textualist”
interpretation and provided an
explanation for why it might
prevail: prioritizing the letter of the
law over its spirit helps citizens
and judges reach a shared
understanding of law’sscope,
which plausibly brings about long-
term social benefits and
outweighs the occasional moral
cost of adopting a textualist
strategy.
Author Contributions: All authors were involved in data
collection, revision of the manuscript and approval of
the final version for submission.
Author contributions: I.R.H., K.P.T., G.d.F.C.F.d.A.,
N. Struchiner, M.K., P.B., V.D., N. Strohmaier, S.B., K.D.,
B.J., E.L., M.L., A.L., I.N., M.P., A.R., J.S., and T.
_
Z.
designed research; I.R.H., K.P.T., G.d.F.C.F.d.A.,
N. Struchiner, M.K., P.B., V.D., N. Strohmaier, S.B., K.D.,
B.J., E.L., M.L., A.L., I.N., M.P., A.R., J.S., and T.
_
Z.
performed research; I.R.H. and G.d.F.C.F.d.A. analyzed
data; and I.R.H., K.P.T., G.d.F.C.F.d.A., N. Struchiner,
M.K., and P.B. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no competing interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.
This article is distributed under Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0
(CC BY-NC-ND).
1
To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email:
ivar@ugr.es.
This article contains supporting information online at
http://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.
2206531119/-/DCSupplemental.
Published October 25, 2022.
PNAS 2022 Vol. 119 No. 44 e2206531119 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2206531119 1of8
RESEARCH ARTICLE
|
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES
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One possibility is that adherence to the rule’sletterservesasa
heuristic when—as in most naturalistic contexts—the rule’s
spirit is undisclosed, unclear, or unsettled. Even a simple rule,
like “No food in the classroom,”might admit of many purposes:
maintaining cleanliness, minimizing distraction, and/or avoiding
student allergies. Therefore, judging a target act by asking
whether it undermines the rule’s presumed purpose(s) can be
impractical and rife with uncertainty. This perspective raises the
possibility that the rule’s text plays a heuristic role (18, 19), i.e.,
to offer a cognitively frugal means by which—with a minimal
cost to accuracy (i.e., specificity and sensitivity)—individuals
may determine which behaviors violate the rule’spurpose.Previ-
ous evidence, however, casts doubt on this explanation: par-
ticipants’textualist tendencies persisted even when revealing
the rule’spurposeandrenderingtheact’soutcomeseasily
evaluable (14).
In the present work, we pursue a distinct explanation for the
emergence of textualism. We conceptualize statutory interpreta-
tion as a social dilemma in which individual judges can have
mixed motives (20, 21). In a standard mixed-motive game,
multiple drivers are approaching an intersection. Each driver
has both (i) an individual preference to drive rather than yield
to other drivers and (ii) a stronger interest in coordinating with
other drivers to avoid a collision. This coordination goal will
lead drivers to converge on a Nash equilibrium.
This incentive structure can help us model the context of
statutory interpretation: when applying rules to ambiguous or
controversial cases, judges may favor conflicting resolutions of
the same case—due, in part, to their divergent moral preferen-
ces (22). For instance, in the simplest case involving only two
judges (see Table 1), judge 1 has a preference to acquit the
defendant (and receives a payoff of P
1
from satisfying this pri-
vate preference) while judge 2 has a preference to convict them
(receiving the payoff P
2
in that case). This model can be
straightforwardly extended to include judge 3, judge 4, and so
on—each with their own private preference. Without an incen-
tive to coordinate their decisions (e.g., if every C
i
=0), judges
will heed their personal preference—resulting in interpretive
disagreement (i.e., the top-right outcome in Table 1).
Yet the legitimacy of legal (and some nonlegal) systems
depends on their stability and predictability (23, 24): compara-
ble cases, which may occur at separate moments in time, should
be decided consistently, even by different judges. For a legal sys-
tem to exhibit stability and predictability, judges must be
rewarded for coordinating their interpretations of legally compa-
rable cases (25). If judges’payoff from coordination is greater
than the payoff received by satisfying their private preferences
(i.e., C
1
>P
1
and C
2
>P
2
), they will seek to choose among the
potential equilibria (i.e., the top-left or bottom-right outcomes).
How might individual judges contribute to a legal system’s
expression of stability? In some cases, judges may consult records
of past decisions or deliberate and seek consensus with their peers.
Our present research uncovers a further means through which
legal officials coordinate their interpretations by default: even
without communicating, judges can achieve coordination by treat-
ing the rules’text as a default coordination device or focal point
(20, 25)—coordinating around conviction (bottom-right) in over-
inclusion cases and acquittal (top-left) in underinclusion cases.
This focal point theory of statutory interpretation was sup-
ported by multiple strands of evidence: (1) whereas laypeople
demonstrated substantial variability within and across cultures,
legal experts achieved greater interpretive agreement—and did
so by adhering to the rule’s literal meaning. (2) When offered
monetary incentives to coordinate their interpretations with an
anonymous partner (whose private preferences would be
unknown), laypeople acquired stronger textualist tendencies
than when individually judging the same set of cases. (3) Our
results revealed a common mechanism underlying the effects of
legal expertise and coordination: laypeople’s statutory interpre-
tation was guided by their personal moral preferences (i.e., their
attitudes of moral blame), while moral preferences had no effect
on lawyers’interpretive judgments or on lay participants offered
coordination incentives.
The present article reports the findings of a large-scale survey
experiment on statutory interpretation conducted in 15 coun-
tries. The studies employed a series of vignette pairs, with an
overinclusion and an underinclusion case in each pair. Each
vignette described an incident (e.g., a fatal traffic accident
involving an inebriated driver), followed by a description of the
rule or law to which it gave rise. Thereafter, the vignette
described a target act, either an overinclusion case (e.g., driving
after using alcohol-based mouthwash) or an underinclusion case
(e.g., driving after using ecstasy).
In our primary study, participants were randomly assigned to
one of 12 conditions in a 2 (case type) ×3 (scenario) ×2 (evalu-
ation mode) between-subjects design. Each participant considered
one of three rules and evaluated one case (overinclusion or under-
inclusion) in either the separate or joint evaluation mode (see
Materials and Methods). In every condition, participants judged
whether the protagonist had violated the rule (the primary trans-
gression judgment). Participants in the joint evaluation mode
were asked two additional questions: (i) whether the rule’sliteral
meaning proscribed the target act (e.g., whether the driver
ingested alcohol) and (ii) their moral attitude toward the case
(i.e., whether the driver’s behavior was morally blameworthy).
Results
Our first sequence of analyses examined responses from 4,120
lay participants recruited throughout 15 countries (mean
n/country =275; see Table 2). To ascertain whether our case-
type manipulation was effective, we assessed the effect of case
type (overinclusion vs. underinclusion) on participants’auxil-
iary judgments of literal meaning and moral blame in the joint
evaluation mode: as expected, overinclusive cases were seen as
proscribed by the literal meaning more than underinclusive
Table 1. Statutory interpretation as a mixed-motive
coordination game
Judge 2 at time 2
Acquit 2 Convict 2
Judge 1 at time 1
Acquit 1 C
2
P
2
P
1
+C
1
P
1
Convict 1 P
2
+C
2
C
1
Note. Individuals’moral values and interpretive commitments (i.e., to textualism vs.
purposivism) can engender conflicting private preferences, P
i
, for one verdict over
another. In the present example, judge 1 prefers to acquit the agent and receives a
payoff for acquittal (P
1
) and judge 2 prefers to convict the agent and receives a payoff
for conviction (P
2
). When coordination is not rewarded (i.e., C
i
=0) or weakly rewarded
(P
i
>C
i
), judges act on their private preferences and their verdicts manifest interpretive
disagreement (i.e., acquit 1 and convict 2). When coordination is strongly rewarded (i.e.,
C
i
>P
i
), judges seek an equilibrium strategy (i.e., acquit 1 and convict 1 or acquit 2 and
convict 2). The text of a statute—due to its salience and/or greater univocality—operates
as a focal point in such circumstances, facilitating coordination among multiple judges in
the absence of communication. Rewards on coordination can arise from formalist
sources (e.g., commitment to a legal system’s stability and predictability) or realist
sources (e.g., one’s reputation and career advancement).
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cases (B=2.26, t=25.00, η
2
=0.23), while underinclusive
cases were seen as more morally blameworthy than overinclusive
cases (B=3.24, t=41.70, η
2
=0.46; both Ps<0.001).
Turning to our primary analysis, a mixed-effects model of
transgression judgments revealed an effect of case type, which
was qualified by the two-way interaction with evaluation mode
(Table 3 and SI Appendix, Analysis 1). Replicating previous evi-
dence (14), the effect of case type indicated that overinclusive
cases (M=4.23) were more likely to be considered transgres-
sions than were underinclusive cases (M=3.73; B=0.51,
t=7.23, η
p2
=0.01, P<0.001; see also Fig. 1A).
In addition to judging whether the agent had violated the
rule, participants in the joint evaluation mode reported whether
the rule’s literal meaning proscribed the act and whether the act
was morally blameworthy. This provided the opportunity to
conceptually replicate our primary findingbyregressingtransgres-
sion judgments on ratings of literal meaning and moral blame. In
this model, literal meaning (B=0.54, t=29.22, η
p2
=0.30)
and moral blame (B=0.15, t=8.53, η
p2
=0.03) indepen-
dently predicted transgression judgments (both Ps<0.001). In
sum, laypeople’s approaches to statutory interpretation through-
out 15 countries reflected both textual and moral criteria—-
though the influence of the former appeared to be substantially
stronger overall (13, 14).
Examining Cultural Variation. An aggregate tendency toward
textualism could mask the presence of variability across cul-
tures. Treating country as a fixed factor in the primary regres-
sion model uncovered substantial variation in transgression
judgments across countries, as indicated by the country ×case
type interaction (see Table 3). The simple effect of case type
revealed a tendency toward textualist interpretation in Brazil
(P=0.021), Canada (P=0.013), Finland, Germany, Italy,
Lithuania, and Poland (Ps<0.001). The effect of case type
was nonsignificant in Mexico (P=0.081), Colombia, India,
Latvia, the United Kingdom and the United States (Ps>
0.11)—and reversed in two countries, namely, Spain (P=
0.002) and the Netherlands (P=0.010).
We defined each country’s textualism score as the marginal
effect of case type (across rules and evaluation modes)—with
positive values representing greater transgression judgments in
overinclusion cases than underinclusion cases. Fig. 1Bdisplays
textualism scores for each country.
To understand whether cultural differences in statutory
interpretation were tied to variability in the effects of moral
blame and/or literal meaning, we devised an additional test
with country (k=15) as the unit of analysis. We treated the
by-country regression coefficients of moral blame and literal
meaning (drawn from the joint evaluation mode) as indicators
of cultural emphases on moral and textual standards, respec-
tively. We then correlated these measures with textualism scores
obtained from an independent sample drawn from the same
country (i.e., responses in the separate evaluation mode).
In Fig. 1C, we plot the regression coefficients of literal mean-
ing and moral blame (on the xaxis) against textualism scores
(on the yaxis). The effect of literal meaning did not predict tex-
tualism at the national level (Spearman’sρ=0.08, P=0.79),
whereas the effect of moral blame did (Spearman’sρ=0.55,
P=0.036). In other words, cultural differences in statutory
interpretation were explained by variability in the extent to
which moral blame influenced transgression judgments. Includ-
ing the legal expert data in these analyses (k=19) confirmed
Table 2. Sample composition
Country NAge mean (SD) Gender (% women) Recruitment method
Brazil 207 27.1 (9.83) 52% Word-of-mouth
Canada 206 34.7 (12.0) 48% Panel (www.prolific.co)
Colombia 259 22.0 (3.80) 35% Extra credit
Finland 142 30.3 (13.4) 40% Panel
Germany 359 37.0 (11.4) 50% Panel (www.clickworker.de)
India 254 32.5 (9.91) 37% Panel (www.qualtrics.com)
Italy 319 30.4 (10.9) 23% Panel (www.prolific.co)
Latvia 569 37.8 (10.4) 63% Panel (www.qualtrics.com)
Lithuania 191 32.8 (9.18) 39% Word-of-mouth
Mexico 210 24.4 (5.04) 39% Panel (www.prolific.co)
Netherlands 391 45.6 (16.7) 45% Panel (www.panelinzicht.nl)
Poland 271 29.0 (8.61) 43% Word-of-mouth
Spain 286 43.2 (15.3) 55% Panel (www.netquest.com)
United Kingdom 202 33.6 (12.7) 70% Panel (www.prolific.co)
United States 254 37.4 (11.2) 48% Panel (www.mturk.com)
Total 4120 36.0 (14.1) 46% —
Table 3. Mixed-effects models of transgression judgments
Laypeople Legal experts
Fdfspη
p2
Fdfspη
p2
Preregistered model Case type 52.98 (1, 4106) <0.001 0.013 97.84 (1, 766) <0.001 0.113
Evaluation mode 1.93 (1, 4103) 0.16 0.001 4.59 (1, 766) 0.032 0.006
Case type ×eval. mode 16.52 (1, 4106) <0.001 0.004 2.61 (1, 767) 0.11 0.003
Exploratory model Country 5.11 (14, 4086) <0.001 0.018 4.02 (3, 763) 0.007 0.015
Case type ×country 9.42 (14, 4086) <0.001 0.031 7.57 (3, 763) <0.001 0.029
Note. Degrees of freedom (dfs) are calculated using the Kenward–Roger approximation.
PNAS 2022 Vol. 119 No. 44 e2206531119 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2206531119 3of8
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that differences in the coefficient of moral blame predicted vari-
ation in textualism scores (Spearman’sρ=0.69, P=0.002),
whereas differences in the coefficient of literal meaning did not
(Spearman’sρ=0.02, P=0.92).
This evidence hints toward the influence of sociocultural fac-
tors and legal traditions in shaping statutory interpretation. To
explore these relationships, we conducted further by-country
correlation analyses (SI Appendix,Analysis2)butdidnotfind
that statutory interpretation differed between common and civil
law traditions, countries with a stronger versus weaker adherence
to the rule of law, or along cultural and economic dimensions.
Elevated Textualism among Legal Experts. As part of our main
study, we also recruited 775 legal experts (596 legal professionals
and 197 law students) from four countries: Finland, the Nether-
lands, Poland, and the United States (mean n/country =194).
Manipulation checks confirmed that legal experts perceived
(i) overinclusive cases as proscribed by the rule’s literal meaning
to a greater extent than underinclusive cases (B=2.39, t=
11.74, η
2
=0.27) and (ii) underinclusive cases as more morally
blameworthy than overinclusive cases (B=3.52, t=20.29,
η
2
=0.52; both Ps<0.001).
Our primary analysis uncovered a large effect of case type
(overinclusion vs. underinclusion) and a small effect of evalua-
tion mode. This time, the two-way interaction was not statisti-
cally significant (Table 3 and SI Appendix, Analysis 1). The
main effect of case type indicated that overinclusion cases (M=
4.67) were more likely to be considered transgressions than
underinclusion cases (M=3.14; B=1.53, t=9.91, η
p2
=
0.11, P<0.001)—a pattern that arose in all four countries when
analyzed separately (Finland P=0.037, remaining Ps<0.001).
To evaluate the effect of legal expertise, we compared
lawyers’and law students’judgments with those of laypeople
drawn from the same four countries, employing propensity
score matching (26, 27) to eliminate the imbalance in age, gen-
der, and nationality between lay and expert groups (SI
Appendix, Analysis 3). We matched (n
pairs
=758) participants
in the experimental (i.e., expert) group to their “nearest
neighbor”in the control group based on their predicted proba-
bility of being legal experts (i.e., their propensity scores)—
thereby reducing covariate imbalance between the lay and
expert samples. In this matched dataset, we ran a mixed-effects
model entering the expertise term and observed an expertise ×
case type interaction (F=23.18, η
p2
=0.02, P<0.001). The
simple effects of expertise indicated that legal experts were less
likely than the matched group of laypeople to view underinclu-
sive cases as transgressions (B=0.69, t=4.43, P<0.001)
and more likely to judge overinclusive cases as transgressions
(B=0.40, t=2.47, P=0.014) (see Fig. 2B).
Moderation analyses in the joint evaluation condition
revealed no main effect of expertise (F=0.40, P=0.53) or
expertise ×literal meaning interaction (F=0.90, P=0.34).
An expertise ×moral blame interaction did emerge (F=10.13,
η
p2
=0.01, P=0.002). Specifically, moral blame predicted
transgression judgments among laypeople (B=0.12, t=2.92,
P=0.004), but not legal experts (B=0.06, t=1.51, P=
0.13; see Fig. 2A). SI Appendix, Analysis 3 reveals qualitatively
indistinguishable results when comparing legal professionals
and law students with the entire (unmatched) lay sample.
In sum, legal experts revealed stronger textualist tendencies
than did laypeople. When issuing transgression judgments,
experts appeared to consider solely the rule’s literal meaning,
while disregarding their moral preferences. Thus, the discrep-
ancy between experts and laypeople arose partly due to the
influence of moral blame on transgression judgments among
the latter, but not among the former.
−2
0
2
4
Textualism score
A
US PL FI NL LT DE IT CA BR MX UK LV CO IN ES
Country
Laypeople
Legal Experts
BLiteral Meaning Moral Blame
−0.3 0.0 0.3 0.6 −0.3 0.0 0.3 0.6
Regression coefficients
C
Fig. 1. Textualism scores among laypeople and legal experts: A–Cshare a common yaxis that displays textualism scores. Positive textualism scores repre-
sent the tendency to treat overinclusion cases as greater transgressions than underinclusion cases. Negative scores represent the tendency to treat under-
inclusion cases as greater transgressions than overinclusion cases. (A) Grouped density plot by expertise (laypeople vs. legal experts) and overlaid group
means. (B) National textualism scores and 95% CIs. Countries are placed along the xaxis, using two-letter country codes: US =United States, PL =Poland,
FI =Finland, NL =The Netherlands, LT =Lithuania, DE =Germany, IT =Italy, CA =Canada, BR =Brazil, MX =Mexico, UK =United Kingdom, LV =Latvia,
CO =Colombia, IN =India, and ES =Spain. (C) National textualism scores in the separate evaluation mode against the regression coefficients of literal
meaning and moral blame in the joint evaluation mode. The xaxes plot the multiple regression coefficients obtained by regressing transgression judgments
simultaneously on literal meaning and moral blame ratings—separately for each country. Positive values represent an independent, positive effect of literal
meaning (Left) or moral blame (Right) on transgression judgments—according to the multiple regression model. A value of zero on the xaxis implies the
absence of an effect of the predictor on transgression judgments.
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Text as Focal Point in a Coordination Game. Finally, we explored
whether incentives on coordination underlie the tendency toward
textualism in interpretive contexts. Our empirical prediction
builds on the recognition that statutory interpretation is governed
by a norm rewarding predictability and consistency across cases.
We hypothesize that these norms of legal decision making instill
in legal experts an incentive to coordinate their interpretations,
and in these circumstances, the rule’s literal meaning—and not its
purpose—acts as a focal point (20, 21).
To evaluate this prediction, we examined people’s interpre-
tive judgments in an incentivized, two-player coordination
game. In the control condition, participants were asked to issue
transgression judgments for a series of eight cases. Meanwhile,
in the coordination condition, participants were randomly
paired with an anonymous partner and each player was offered
a monetary reward for matching their transgression judgments
with their partner without communicating. If a rule’s literal
meaning serves as a focal point, the incentive to coordinate
should strengthen participants’reliance on literal meaning. We
analyzed the data in a mixed-effects logistic regression with case
type (overinclusion vs. underinclusion), condition (control vs.
coordination), and the case type ×condition interaction as
fixed effects (treating participants and scenarios as crossed ran-
dom effects). This model revealed an effect of case type (χ
2
=
135.35) and a case type ×condition interaction (χ
2
=24.28,
both Ps<0.001). No main effect of condition was observed
(χ
2
=0.29, P=0.59).
As predicted, the case type ×condition interaction indicated
that (i) overinclusion cases were more likely to be considered
transgressions in the coordination condition (prob. =0.62)
than in the control condition (prob. =0.53; odds ratio [OR] =
1.48, z=3.84, P<0.001) and (ii) underinclusion cases were
less likely to be considered transgressions in the coordination
condition (prob. =0.32) than in the control condition (prob. =
0.39; OR =0.72, z=3.15, P=0.002; see Fig. 3B)—unveiling
stronger textualist tendencies under conditions promoting coordi-
nated interpretation.
To ascertain whether coordination incentives strengthened tex-
tualist interpretation by reducing participants’emphasis on moral
blame (as in the comparison between experts and laypeople), an
additional sample (n=299) was asked to provide literal meaning
and moral blame ratings for each of the cases. We then calculated
mean literal meaning and moral blame ratings for each case and
entered these values as case-level predictors in a mixed-effects
logistic model of transgression decisions. The model included lit-
eral meaning, moral blame, condition (control vs. coordination),
and the literal meaning ×condition and moral blame ×condi-
tion interactions as fixed effects. This analysis revealed a main
effect of literal meaning (χ
2
=57.56, P<0.001) and both literal
meaning ×condition (χ
2
=4.33, P=0.037) and moral blame ×
condition interactions (χ
2
=7.64, P=0.006). No main effects of
condition or moral blame were observed (Ps>0.16). Whereas lit-
eral meaning predicted transgression decisions in both control
(z=7.00, OR =2.20) and coordination (z=8.21, OR =2.96)
conditions (both Ps<0.001), the effect of moral blame was sig-
nificant in the control (z=2.43, OR =1.49, P=0.015), but
not the coordination (z=0.64, OR =0.89, P=0.52), condi-
tion (see Fig. 3A). In sum, when experimentally incentivized to
coordinate their interpretive judgments, participants tended to
disregard their moral preferences and strengthen their adherence
to the rules’literal meaning—as stipulated by the focal point the-
ory of statutory interpretation (see Table 1). As such, these results
point toward a common mechanism underlying the effects of
legal expertise and experimentally induced coordination on textu-
alist interpretation.
LM × Expertise: p = .34 MB × Expertise: p = .002
Literal Meaning Moral Blame
147147
1
4
7
Transgression judgment
A
Underinclusion Overinclusion
Laypeople
Legal Experts
B
Fig. 2. Expertise effect on transgression judgments. Aand Bshare a com-
mon yaxis that displays transgression judgments on a seven-point Likert
scale. Higher values represent greater agreement with a statement that
the agent violated the rule (1 =“strongly disagree,”7=“strongly agree”). (A)
Conditional effect plots of literal meaning (Left) and moral blame (Right)by
expertise (laypeople vs. legal experts). The xaxes span the scale range of
literal meaning and moral blame ratings, with higher values reflecting
agreement with statements that the agent violated the literal meaning of
the rule (Left) and that their conduct was morally blameworthy (Right). The
moral blame ×expertise interaction was statistically significant (P=0.002),
whereas the literal meaning ×expertise interaction was not (P=0.34).
LM =literal meaning; MB =moral blame. (B) Mean transgression judg-
ments and 95% CIs by case type and expertise (laypeople vs. legal experts).
Case type is placed on the xaxis, with underinclusive cases on the Left
(circles) and overinclusive cases on the Right (triangles).
LM × Condition: p = .037 MB × Condition: p = .006
Literal Meaning Moral Blame
0 100 0 100
0
1
Transgression judgment
A
Underinclusion Overinclusion
Control
Coordination
B
Fig. 3. Coordination effect on transgression judgments. Aand Bshare a
common yaxis that displays the predicted probability of a transgression
judgment. Higher values represent a greater probability of affirming that
the agent violated the rule (1 =“yes,”0=“no”). (A)Conditionaleffect
plots of case-level literal meaning (Left) and moral blame (Right)bycondi-
tion (control vs. coordination). As in Fig. 2A,thexaxes span the scale
range of literal meaning and moral blame ratings, with higher values
reflecting agreement with statements that the agent violated the literal
meaning of the rule (Left) and that their conduct was morally blamewor-
thy (Right). Condition interacted with both literal meaning (P=0.037) and
moral blame (P=0.006), such that literal meaning had a stronger effect
and moral blame had a weaker effect in the coordination condition (rela-
tive to the control condition). (B) Mean transgression judgments and 95%
CIs by case type and condition. Case type is placed on the xaxis, with
underinclusive cases on the Left (circles) and overinclusive cases on the
Right (triangles).
PNAS 2022 Vol. 119 No. 44 e2206531119 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2206531119 5of8
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Discussion
A cross-cultural survey experiment documented substantial vari-
ability in statutory interpretation across 15 diverse cultures and
jurisdictions. Legal experts and laypeople recognized that
underinclusive acts (e.g., driving after taking ecstasy) are mor-
ally blameworthy, whereas overinclusive acts (e.g., driving after
using alcohol-based mouthwash) are not. Nevertheless, when
reasoning about which acts violated the law (e.g., a zero-
tolerance policy), in the aggregate, participants tended to reach
the opposite conclusion: namely, that underinclusive acts com-
ply with the corresponding rules, while overinclusive acts vio-
late them—demonstrating a textualist response pattern. This
tendency to prioritize a rule’s literal interpretation was further
strengthened by legal expertise.
Why would legal experts especially disregard their moral
sense and privilege the letter of the law when tasked with apply-
ing written rules? Like laypeople, legal professionals hold varied
moral views—agreeing or disagreeing with certain legal rules.
Various professional incentives, however, discourage legal
experts from moralizing rule interpretation: judges seek to
avoid being overruled, and lawyers’ethics requires advising
their clients of the likely, not personally favored, outcome.
More broadly, the rule of law and the legitimacy of judicial
decisions hinge on legal systems’expression of stability and pre-
dictability in judicial outcomes. Our studies suggested that this
circumstance can be fruitfully modeled as a mixed-motive game
in which legal officials—despite their heterogeneous moral
preferences—can reach an equilibrium if they are rewarded for
their coordination. As evidence in favor of this account, lawyers
achieved greater interpretive agreement by applying textual stand-
ards, and their elevated textualist tendencies were partly explained
by a dissociation between their moral attitudes and their interpre-
tive judgments (see also refs. (28, 29)). Furthermore, we experi-
mentally recreated this phenomenon by monetarily incentivizing
lay participants to coordinate their interpretive judgments without
communication.
Our studies included various mundane rules (e.g., household
or workplace rules), which even nonlawyers would be tasked
with enforcing. Evidence that laypeople demonstrate textualist
inclinations when judging nonlegal cases points toward the
broader applicability of our findings and reveals that textualism
is not circumscribed to the legal domain. Rather, textualism
may be better explained as emerging from the social dimension of
legal and nonlegal rules alike (30), i.e., the tendency for rules to
govern the conduct of a diverse group of individuals. Absent this
social quality, e.g., in the context of personal rules (SI Appendix,
Analysis 4), the demand for stability and predictability may be
relaxed—rendering purposive interpretation more advantageous.
Previous scholarship has theorized that the “plain meaning
of a text as applied to a set of facts”can play the role of a coor-
dination device ((31), p. 1557; see also refs. (20, 25)), a salient
element of the context that highlights one among multiple
equilibria. Our final experiment vindicated this prediction,
demonstrating that—when incentivized to coordinate their
interpretations of legal and nonlegal rules in circumstances that
preclude communication—people strengthen their adherence
to the rules’literal meanings.
Implications and Limitations. These results inform ongoing
legal debates about the interpretation of contracts, statutes, and
constitutions. For example, in American legal interpretation,
modern textualist judges increasingly aim to interpret laws in
line with what those laws communicate to an ordinary member
of the public (see, e.g., ref. (32)). The results here suggest some
support for this theory’s focus on text: ordinary people’s under-
standing of legal rules is heavily informed by the rules’text.
The findings also reveal a pronounced effect of legal training
on the interpretation of rules. Legal experts were more inclined
to rely on the letter over the spirit of the law. The coordination
game results suggest that legal experts’real-world convergence
on literal meaning might not necessarily reflect those experts’
consensus about the rule’s“ordinary public meaning.”The
same convergence could also be explained by a rational response
to coordination incentives. In other words, experts’real-world
coordination around rules’text might reflect their desire to
coordinate around a clear focal point.
Our coordination game shares important features of real-
world judicial decision making. Commentators note that judges
dislike having their decisions reversed on appeal (33) and care
deeply about the regard of their peer and popular audiences
(34). These interests produce incentives to coordinate (e.g.,
with appellate judges or with popular reception). However,
communicative coordination can be costly or even impossible:
judges often manage a large number of cases (35), and there is
little time to survey one’s peers to identify the outcome on
which to coordinate. Moreover, lower court judges who prefer
nonreversal would want to know the views of the appellate
judge assigned to their case, but in systems that randomly
assign judges, the appellate judge’s identity—and, by extension,
their views—are unknown at the time that the trial court judge
evaluates the case. Our economic game, involving incentiviza-
tion without communication, offers a useful model of this com-
mon dynamic and further supports that text serves as a default
coordination device in the absence of communication (25, 31).
Though we noted that approaches to statutory interpretation
varied substantially across field sites, whether this variation was
driven strictly by elements of culture or legal tradition is unclear
(SI Appendix,Analysis2). Since our sampling methods differed
across locations, variation in the tendency toward textualism could
also partially arise from unobserved differences in the samples’
composition. Given these sampling differences, we caution readers
against drawing strong conclusions about the role of culture or
legal tradition in statutory interpretation from our present findings.
Why precisely literal meaning provides a focal point cannot
be gleaned from our present studies. One possibility, supported
by preliminary data (SI Appendix, Analysis 5), is that individu-
als in diverse communities have a similar understanding of the
rule’s literal meaning but are prone to disagree in their apprais-
als of whether the incident violated the rule’s deeper purpose.
The recognition of greater univocality in literal meaning could
instigate coordination around the rule’s text over its (morally
divisive) purpose. As a future test of this hypothesis, we envi-
sion studies of legal reasoning in morally homogeneous socie-
ties, in which moral preferences may be more uniform—
potentially obviating the need for legal text as a coordination
device and helping to establish a link between the emergence of
legal text and moral diversity.
In these studies, our focus was on difficult cases involving
conflict between literal meaning and moral attitudes. Mean-
while, most real-world incidents simultaneously violate (i.e.,
true positives) or comply with (i.e., true negatives) both the
text and the purpose of a rule, so naturally occurring instances
of overinclusion and underinclusion are likely to be infrequent
(36). This approach places certain limits on the ecological
validity of our findings but in turn offers critical insight into
the cognitive basis of legal reasoning by dissociating the roles of
the letter versus the spirit of the law.
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Finally, our interest in this work was in whether a behavior
violates a given rule—what we called transgression judgments.
This question is distinct from questions of whether the behav-
ior warrants punishment and, if so, of what magnitude. On the
basis of past research (37), it stands to reason that punishment
allocations may recruit distinct cognitive processes and reflect a
different balance of textual and moral appraisal than was
observed when examining transgression judgments.
Conclusions. As part of normative development, adults abandon
the uncritical deference to the rule of authority in order to manifest
deeper ethical principles (3). Yet when prompted to decide which
behaviors are permissible by legal standards, people disregard their
personal moral values to a surprising degree and prioritize the literal
meaning of rules instead. This textualist approach to interpretation
is strengthened by legal training, and evidence from an incentivized
experiment yielded potential insight into its origin: applying a rule’s
literal meaning, in detriment of its intended purpose or instrumen-
tal value, can serve as a focal point (20, 25) among individuals who
share an interest in aligning their interpretations. In this way, adopt-
ing a textualist policy—even while incurring moral costs in certain,
rare instances—could facilitate long-term social coordination (38)
among lawmakers, citizens, and judges.
Materials and Methods
The studies were conducted with approval from Yale’s Human Research Protec-
tion Program. Participants were informed about the nature of the study and
asked to provide written consent before taking part in the study. Study data,
analysis scripts, and stimuli (including translations) are publicly accessible on the
Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/yw8ek/.
Materials. Our studies employed a battery of nine vignette pairs with one over-
inclusion and one underinclusion case in each pair. The coordination game
made use of eight vignette pairs (vehicles, sleep, driving, library, classroom,
shoes, environment, and music), while the main study employed three pairs
(classroom, phone, and driving).
The vignettes first described an incident (e.g., “A 21-year-old woman suffered
atraffic accident that took her life. The young woman was driving under the
influence.”), followed by a description of the rule or law to which it gave rise,
including its underlying purpose (“In order to avoid future accidents, Congress
passed a zero-tolerance policy establishing that: ‘If the breathalyzer detects any
trace of alcohol, the vehicle will be seized and the driver subject to imprison-
ment.’”). Then, the vignette described a target act, either in violation of the text
of the rule, but not its underlying purpose (in overinclusion cases, e.g., using
alcohol-based mouthwash prior to driving), or in violation of the purpose of the
rule, but not its text (in underinclusion cases, e.g., using ecstasy prior to driving).
Measures.
Transgression judgment. Our dependent measure waswhether the protagonist
who carried out the target act had violatedthe rule. Inthe main study, transgres-
sion judgments (e.g., “Andrea violated the zero-tolerance policy.”) were made on
a seven-point scale ranging from 1: “strongly disagree”to 7: “strongly agree.”In
the coordination game, transgression judgments (“Did [the agent] break the
rule?”) were dichotomous: 1 =“Yes”and 0 =“No.”
Supplementary ratings: literal meaning and moral blame. In the main study,
participants in the joint evaluation mode were also asked to rate whether the text
of the rule proscribed the target act (literal meaning, e.g., “Andrea drove after
ingesting a product containing alcohol.”) and whether the protagonist’s behavior
was morally blameworthy (moral blame, e.g., “Andrea is morally blameworthy for
what she did.”). Both assessments, i.e., of literal meaning and moral blame, were
made on seven-point scales ranging from 1: “definitely not”to 7 “definitely.”
In the addendum to the coordination game, participants were asked to rate
whether the text of the rule proscribed the target act (literal meaning, e.g., “John
wore shoes in the house.”) and whether the protagonist’s behavior was morally
blameworthy (moral blame, e.g., “What John did was morally wrong.”). Both
assessments were made on sliding scales ranging from 0: “strongly disagree”to
100: “strongly agree.”
Textualism score. The marginal effect of case type (with underinclusion as the
reference level and averaged over levels of evaluation mode and rule) consti-
tuted our by-country measure of textualism (M=0.89, SD =0.92). Textualism
scores were normally distributed (Shapiro–Wilk test: W=0.96, P=0.64) and
strongly correlated across evaluation modes (r=0.70, P<0.001).
Participants.
Laypeople. Four thousand one hundred and twenty participants were recruited in
15 countries (see Table 2 for demographic information and recruitment details).
Legal experts. Five hundred ninety-six law graduates and 179 law students
(age: M=40.5, SD =13.9; 48% women) were recruited from four countries:
Finland (n=124; 110 law graduates and 14 law students), the Netherlands
(n=331; 331 law graduates and no law students), Poland (n=161; 145 law
graduates and 16 law students), and the United States (n=159; 9 law gradu-
ates and 150 law students).
Coordination game. Six hundred participants (age: M=26.4, SD =8.61; 40%
women) were recruited via Prolific.co and invited to take part in an experiment
in exchange for monetary compensation.
Coordination game: addendum. Two hundred ninety-nine participants (age:
M=37.6, SD =12.0; 49% women) were recruited via Prolific.co and invited to
take part in an experiment in exchange for monetary compensation.
Procedure: Main Study. In a 2 (case: overinclusive and underinclusive) ×2
(evaluation mode: separate and joint) ×3 (scenario: car, phone, and alcohol)
between-subjects design, participants read either an overinclusion or an underin-
clusion case.
Our primary dependent measure was participants’agreement or disagree-
ment with a statement that the agent had violated the rule. In the joint evaluation
mode, the primary dependent measure was accompanied by two supplementary
assessments of the literal meaning of the rule and the agent’smoralblame(see
Measures subsection).
Procedure: Coordination Game. In a 2 between- (condition: control and
coordination) ×2 within- (case: overinclusive and underinclusive) ×8within-
(scenario) balanced incomplete block design, participants read a sequence of six
scenarios (plus two filler trials). In the control condition, participants were asked
to “make a decision: did the person violate the rule (YES) or not (NO)?”Mean-
while, in the coordination condition, participants were told:
“You are invited to play the Judging Game. You are Judge 1 and you have
been paired with another player, Judge 2. On the following screens, both
of you will be reading the same eight stories. Each story describes a rule
and a person’s behavior. After reading each story, you will both be asked to
make a decision: Did the person violate the rule (YES) or not (NO)?
To win extra earnings, you and Judge 2 must agree on as many decisions as
possible. You must try and reach the same decision on Case 1, on Case 2,
on Case 3, etc., all the way through Case 8 without talking to each other. If
you agree on at least six decisions, each of you will earn an additional £1.00
(for a total of £1.70). If not, neither of you will earn the additional £1.00.”
Participants made a dichotomous transgression judgment for each scenario.
At the end of the study, participants in the coordination condition were randomly
paired and paid a £1 bonus if they agreed on at least six of the eight cases.
Study design, predictions, and analysis plans were preregistered at https://
aspredicted.org/qj5mc.pdf.
Procedure: Coordination Game Addendum. In a 2 within- (case: overinclu-
sive and underinclusive) ×8 within- (scenario) balanced incomplete block design,
participants read a sequence of six scenarios (plus two filler trials). After each case,
participants were asked to judge whether the case violated the literal meaning of
the rule and whether the agent was morally blameworthy (see Measures).
Data, Materials, and Software Availability. Anonymized study data, analy-
sis scripts, and stimuli (including translations) have been deposited in the Open
Science Framework (https://osf.io/yw8ek/) (39).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. This research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of
Science and Innovation (PID2020-119791RA-I00; RTI2018-098882-B-I00), the
Polish National Science Centre (2020/36/C/HS5/00111; 2017/25/N/HS5/00944),
the Swiss National Science Foundation (PZ00P1_179912), and the European
Research Council (805498).
PNAS 2022 Vol. 119 No. 44 e2206531119 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2206531119 7of8
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Author affiliations:
a
Universidad de Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain;
b
Georgetown
University, Washington, DC 20057;
c
Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520;
d
Pontifical Catholic
University of Rio de Janeiro, 22541 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;
e
University of Zurich, 8006 Z€
urich,
Switzerland;
f
Jagiellonian University in Krak
ow, 31007 Krak
ow, Poland;
g
Universiteit Leiden,
2311 Leiden, the Netherlands;
h
Vilnius University, 01513 Vilnius, Lithuania;
i
University of
Silesia in Katowice, 40007 Katowice, Poland;
j
University of Helsinki, 00100 Helsinki, Finland;
k
University College London, London WC1E 6BT, U nited Kingdom;
l
R
iga Stradin¸
sUniversity,
1007 Riga, Latvia; and
m
Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 500001 Bogot
a, Colombia
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