Can Disgust Predict Legal Decision-Making? An Experimental Jurisprudence Perspective on Gut Feelings and the Rule of Law

In this article we consider whether the theory of moral reasoning developed by Jonathan Haidt can be usefully adapted to illuminate aspects of legal reasoning. According to Haidt’s social intuitionism, moral reasoning is incapable of controlling our moral intuitions. Moral reasoning is mostly just an ex post rationalisation of independently formed intuitions. But is control regained when we move from the moral to the legal domain? Are we able to control the application of legal rules, or are our legal judgments, like our moral judgments, the result of the distorting influence of intuitions? To explore this issue, we will attempt to develop and discuss an experimental protocol focusing on the role of disgust in rule-based decision making. We will attempt to illustrate a methodology that can illuminate the psychology of rule-following by discussing its theoretical and methodological premises.