Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
Sci Adv. 2023 Feb 10;9(6):eabo1095. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abo1095. Epub 2023 Feb 8.
Many legal decisions center on the thoughts or perceptions of some idealized group of individuals, referred to variously as the "average person," "the typical consumer," or the "reasonable person." Substantial concerns exist, however, regarding the subjectivity and vulnerability to biases inherent in conventional means of assessing such responses, particularly the use of self-report evidence. Here, we addressed these concerns by complementing self-report evidence with neural data to inform the mental representations in question. Using an example from intellectual property law, we demonstrate that it is possible to construct a parsimonious neural index of visual similarity that can inform the reasonable person test of trademark infringement. Moreover, when aggregated across multiple participants, this index was able to detect experimenter-induced biases in self-report surveys in a sensitive and replicable fashion. Together, these findings potentially broaden the possibilities for neuroscientific data to inform legal decision-making across a range of settings.
许多法律决策都围绕着一些理想化的个人群体的思想或观念展开，这些群体被称为“一般人”、“典型消费者”或“合理人”。然而，人们对评估此类反应的传统方法所固有的主观性和易受偏见影响存在重大担忧，特别是在使用自我报告证据时。在这里，我们通过将自我报告证据与神经数据相结合来为所涉及的心理表象提供信息，从而解决了这些担忧。我们使用知识产权法的一个例子来说明，构建一个简洁的神经视觉相似性指数来为商标侵权的合理人测试提供信息是可能的。此外，当跨多个参与者进行汇总时，该指数能够以敏感和可重复的方式检测到自我报告调查中的实验诱导偏差。总之，这些发现可能会拓宽神经科学数据在各种情况下为法律决策提供信息的可能性。
