On this Student Spotlight: Laws change all the time, but some have carried on for centuries. Why is this?
Yunsuh Nike Wee, Ph.D. student in the department of psychology at Oklahoma State University, discusses some.
Yunsuh (Nike) Wee is a Ph.D. student in experimental psychology working with Dr. Daniel Sznycer. Her research focuses on how the mind computes values and how evaluative systems interface with emotion systems. Her research draws on social psychology, evolutionary psychology, and behavioral ecology.
Origins of Laws About Bodily Damage
Since ancient times, laws have sought to establish compensation for the loss of body parts or life. The most iconic example is “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” but similar principles are found everywhere.
In medieval times, laws about wergild, or “man price,” dictated how much you had to pay if you killed or injured someone. This practice was found worldwide: among the Anglo-Saxons, the Nuer people of South Sudan, and indigenous groups in the Pacific Northwest.
In modern times, workers’ compensation laws protect employees injured in workplace accidents. These laws set specific amounts for injuries to different body parts, like a damaged hand or loss of hearing.
But where do these laws come from? One theory suggests that laws are cultural creations that vary across societies and historical eras. But we explored a different theory: that laws about bodily harm originate from shared intuitions about the value of body parts—intuitions that are part of human nature.
Some body parts are more critical than others. Life without a toe may be inconvenient, but life without the head is impossible. Laws about bodily damage may reflect this intuitive understanding.
We tested this hypothesis by comparing how laypeople from the United States and India valued different body parts. We also examined whether laypeople’s valuations matched the compensations set by workers’ compensation laws in the United States, Korea, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as medieval laws from England and Sweden.
The results were striking. Despite massive distances in space and time, we found that people value body parts in much the same way. This suggests that the blueprints for laws about bodily damage are embedded in the evaluative mechanisms of the brain. Laws about bodily harm, and the psychology behind them, seem to be part of human nature.
Read More:
[ScienceAdvances] – Laws about bodily damage originate from shared intuitions about the value of body parts
