Abstract
The paper concentrates on the experimental verification of the rule based categorization hypothesis in context of the tax law regulation. We’ve built a simple experiment in which we asked participants - students of law (N = 15) to categorize 17 objects displayed on the photographs. The subjects were instructed to categorize objects for the purpose of tax law classification, resulting with the assessment of a proper tax rate. The results are presented from the perspective of the rule-based categorization theory. In our study we use an eye-tracker (SensoMotoric Instruments, model RED 250 Hz) to record the movements of eyeballs, and to check whether the eye-tracking parameters such as; the number of fixations, regressions from the picture of the object in determined areas of interest. The experiment revealed differences in eye movement patterns, reactions times when participants evaluated ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ objects. The purpose of this paper is thus relatively modest. The major research question is descriptive rather than normative. The study concentrates on the possibility and cognitive effectiveness of nudging in a very narrow field of legislative design rather than on the debate on the normative implications of this strategy. However we believe that this contribution on descriptive aspects of cognitive processes presupposes the debate on the legitimacy of nudging from the wider normative, legal and moral perspective.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Sunstein and Thaler 2008.
- 3.
Hart 1961.
- 4.
Langacker 1991.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
Kosecki 2003.
- 8.
Gallese and Lakoff 2005, pp. 455–457.
- 9.
Chomsky 1965.
- 10.
Winter 2001.
- 11.
Amsterdam and Bruner 2000, Descombes.
- 12.
Penner 1998.
- 13.
Fodor 1981.
- 14.
Pardo and Patterson 2013.
- 15.
Winter 2001.
- 16.
Gardo and Lakoff 2005.
- 17.
Winter 1989.
- 18.
Lakoff 1987.
- 19.
Chomsky 1965.
- 20.
Nossofsky and Little 2010.
- 21.
Bruner et al. 1956, Nosofsky 1992.
- 22.
Smith et al. 1998.
- 23.
E. E. Smith et al. 1998, p. 169.
- 24.
Cf. Smith and Sloman 1994.
- 25.
Nosofsky 1986.
- 26.
Hampton 1995.
- 27.
Winter 2001.
- 28.
Kosecki 2004b.
- 29.
- 30.
Murphy and Medin 1985.
- 31.
Murphy and Medin 1985.
- 32.
Smith et al. 1998.
- 33.
Just and Carpenter 1980.
- 34.
Cf. Duchowski 2007 p. 11 and p. 47.
- 35.
Velichkovsky 1999.
- 36.
- 37.
Cf. Kahneman and Miller 1986.
- 38.
Osherson and Smith 1997.
- 39.
This observation does not refer to Dworkin 1977, 1986, where rules are undetermined and the case (the hard case) has to be solved by virtue of weighting principles. We use the concept of typical case (easy case) vs. vague case (hard case) as referred to the typicality and vagueness described in Osherson and Smith 1997.
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Acknowledgement
The paper has been prepared within the framework of the research project:2015/17/B/HS5/00495 financed by the National Science Centre, Poland. The research has been conducted with the equipment sponsored by the Foundation for Polish Science in the framework of the FOCUS program. We would like to thank Paweł Soluch, Neurodevice Ltd. and The Institute of Sensory Analysis for help and technical assistance in conducting the experiment .
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Golecki, M.J., Romanowicz, M., Wojciechowski, J.W. (2016). Nudging in Tax Law?. In: Mathis, K., Tor, A. (eds) Nudging - Possibilities, Limitations and Applications in European Law and Economics. Economic Analysis of Law in European Legal Scholarship, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29562-6_15
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