Escalating the Commitment

Escalation of commitment is the tendency to invest additional resources in an apparently losing investment, influenced by effort, money and time already invested. If the costs outweigh the benefits, the extra costs incurred are held in a different mental account than the one associated with the first investment. To visualize this fallacy let us use…

NEUROLAW NOVEMBER III – The Social Brain

At the beginning, millions of years ago, bacteria were swallowing mitochondria. This small neighbor was not digested, however. Instead, the bacterium eventually evolved to live in a symbiotic relationship with its mitochondrial counterpart. The bacterium managed life, locomotion, food intake and more, while the mitochondria ensured that there was always plenty of energy available. This…

All you need to know on the Endowment Effect

We recently mentioned in our Rational Roundup the Nobel Prize won by Prof. Richard Thaler. One of Richard Thaler’s key contributions to behavioral economics – and a reason for an increasing awareness of the latter as a field of research from the early 1980s onwards – is his work on what he labeled the endowment…

All you need to know on the Hindsight Bias

A few months ago, I published a #30in30 regarding the hindsight bias. As I promised, during this essay, I will give you more information on the impacts on the legal profession as well as on debiasing this classic behavioral bias. This article will be a thorough introduction. Hence, there is no need to read the…

All you need to know on Anchoring

Anchoring is a cognitive effect with utmost importance to legal professionals’ work. Its applicability ranges from mediation to negotiation to court trials. Almost every legal professional will discover its impact on his own daily work. Research shows, that especially legal professionals are not immune but rather prone to the anchoring effect. Hence, this article will…