We're happy to host Dr. Taya Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University at our weekly Dmep Seminar.

Please notice the different time.


Honesty among lawyers: Moral character, game framing, and honest disclosures in negotiations

In this presentation, I will discuss my work on the Honesty Project—a three-year $4.4 million project funded by the John Templeton Foundation to study scientific and philosophical questions about honesty—and a new research study on honesty among lawyers. Professional codes of conduct for lawyers generally prohibit outright lying in negotiations concerning factual matters even though misdirection is often expected on goals and bottom lines. There is ambiguity about the extent to which lawyers must proactively disclose honest information, for example, to correct an opposing counsel's misimpressions or mistakes. In these ambiguous cases, we suggest that lawyers’ choices about whether to disclose information will be guided by factors such as personal beliefs, moral values, and their framing of the task at hand. We surveyed 215 lawyers from across the United States to examine the degree to which honest disclosures are associated with lawyers’ moral character and their tendency to frame negotiation in less versus more game-like terms—a construal of negotiations that we label game framing. We focus on two key features of games to make the argument that game framing of negotiations will be associated with less honesty. First, games typically (though not always) are adversarial; they have winners and losers, and the goal is to win. Second, game rules are arbitrary and artificial; rules do not carry over outside the specific game and could easily be different. We propose that when individuals view negotiations as adversarial contexts with arbitrary and artificial rules, moral norms are relaxed in favor of game norms, and such norms allow for low levels of honesty. Our results support this proposal by showing that lawyers with lower levels of moral character are more likely than those with higher levels to apply a game frame to negotiations, and application of this frame is related to less willingness to honestly disclose information when the legal requirement to do so is ambiguous.


Looking forward to seeing you all !

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