Red States, Blue States, and Brain States

Abstract

Advances in neuroscience are beginning to shape law and public policy, giving rise to the field of “neurolaw.” The impact of neuroscientific evidence on how laws are written and interpreted in practice will depend in part on how neurolaw is understood by the public. Drawing on a nationally representative telephone survey experiment, this article presents the first evidence on public approval of neurolaw. We find that the public is generally neutral in its support for neuroscience-based legal reforms. However, how neurolaw is framed affects support based on partisanship: Republicans’ approval of neurolaw decreases when neuroscience is seen as primarily serving to reduce offender culpability, whereas Democrats’ approval is unaffected by how neurolaw is framed. These results suggest that both framing and partisanship may shape the future of neuroscience-based reforms in law and policy.

The Analysis of Nonverbal Communication: The Dangers of Pseudoscience in Security and Justice Contexts

“…The reasons for irrational beliefs have been the subject of extensive scientific literature. People's critical thinking abilities, political, and religious ideologies, as well as cognitive skills and scientific knowledge are some of those reasons (Bensley & Lilienfeld, 2017;Bensley, Lilienfeld, & Powell, 2014;Boudry, Blancke, & Pigliucci, 2015;Bronstein, Pennycook, Bear, Rand, & Cannon, 2018;Gauchat, 2012;Majima, 2015;Nisbet, Cooper, & Garrett, 2015;Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2015;Shen & Gromet, 2015). But why do some organizations in the fields of security and justice turn to pseudoscience and pseudoscientific techniques?…”

Neurotechnology and Society: Strengthening Responsible Innovation in Brain Science

“…Looking specifically at national brain projects, we can see numerous attempts by stakeholders to systematically integrate brain science and society (Shen and Gromet, 2015). For example, the Work Programme 2016 of the French National Research Agency (ANR) promotes collaborative research in humanities and neurosciences to better understand the social dimension of human brains, e.g., memory, behaviors, conscience, thought, language, and relationships with others (http://www.agence-nationalerecherche.fr/en/funding-opportunities/ work-programme-2016/).…”