Reducing the Social Costs of (Some) Priors

Claire Hill (University of Minnesota)

Reducing the Social Costs of (Some) Priors

I argue here that some priors – by which I mean prior beliefs, values, identity and identification, temperament, visceral reactions, and other aspects of mental states- that people have can be costly for society.   A person who believes the world is not just may not be deterred by standard punishments for societally disfavored behavior such as crime, since he may feel he may get punished in any event .   A person whose visceral reaction to a marginalized group is revulsion may treat group members accordingly.   A person whose value system is ‘every person for him/herself; caveat emptor’ may create and sell toxic securities to herd- following institutional investors investing for widows and orphans.   How might people be made to internalize societal costs of these priors? How might these costly priors be made more costly for those holding them?   I explore a few possibilities, all with analogues in dissonance reduction literature.  

Bio: 

CLAIRE HILL teaches at the University of Minnesota Law School, where she is Professor and James L. Krusemark Chair in Law. She heads the Law School's Institute for Law and Rationality, co-heads its Institute for Law and Economics, and is an Affiliated Faculty Member of the . University's Center for Cognitive Sciences.  Professor Hill teaches and publishes in business law, law and economics, and behavioral law and economics. Several of her articles have won prizes or been featured in compendiums of noteworthy articles.  Her work has analyzed the behavior and psychology of important business actors such as institutional investors, corporate managers and bankers, and has argued for law and policy responses taking such an analysis into account. She is presently researching the extent to which people's beliefs and mental states affect their worldviews, especially their views about government. She has given several endowed lectures on subjects at the intersection of law, psychology and language.

The seminar will take place in room J (first floor, wing a) at the TPM building of TU Delft (Jaffalaan 5), building nr 31 on the following map:

http://www.tudelft.nl/en/about-tu-delft/containers/campus-map/

In case you might be interested in attending this meeting, please send me an email.

Best wishes,

Sabine Roeser

Prof.dr. Sabine Roeser

TU Delft

Ethics and Philosophy of Technology

Department of Values, Technology, and Innovation

Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management

Jaffalaan 5

2628 BX Delft

The Netherlands

+31 (0) 15 2788779

[email protected]

www.tbm.tudelft.nl/sroeser

Twitter: @SabineRoeser