Are There Cross‐Cultural Legal Principles? Modal Reasoning Uncovers Procedural Constraints on Law

Ivar R. Hannikainen, Kevin Tobia, Guilherme da F. C. F. de Almeida, Raff Donelson, Vilius Dranseika, Markus Kneer, Niek Strohmaier, Piotr Bystranowski, Kristina Dolinina, Bartosz Janik, Sothie Keo, Eglė Lauraitytė, Alice Liefgreen, Maciej Próchnicki, Alejandro Rosas, Noel Struchiner · Cognitive Science · 2021 · experimental-jurisprudence · 10.1111/cogs.13024 · record hannikainen2021-are-there-cross-cultural-legal-pri
tag layer · index · concepts · authors · עברית
Where this record's text came from. faceted 2026-08 by reading the locally held text (pdftext); every evidence string verified as an exact substring of that text before merging. Replication status set to 'replicated' because the paper is itself a preregistered cross-cultural and cross-linguistic reproduction of an earlier US finding, and reports the effect as significant in every one of the 11 countries analysed separately. The theoretical framing draws heavily on Fuller (1964), but the paper cites Fuller as background rather than positioning its own claim for or against him, so no claim_relation to Fuller was recorded. 2026-08-14 and 2026-08-15 schema-0.3 passes: every quote verified as an exact substring of the staged text and anchored at merge time; concept terms verified present; every edge endpoint an existing node.
How to read this page. The article itself is not reproduced here — this paper is not cleared for redistribution, so what follows is the tag layer alone. The evidence sentences are withheld with the article. The table at the foot lists every tag the record carries; each row names the facet it belongs to, and the whose words column says whether the tag records the paper's own wording or the tagger's sentence about the paper. Every tag links to each other paper in the corpus carrying it. The machine-readable edition of the same thing is the TEI file beside this one, where the tags live in standOff, and the article is at its publisher via the link below. When we have changed our mind. Some entries in the table begin with a word in capitals and the reason for it. EVIDENCE CORRECTED — the finding still stands, but we had quoted the wrong sentence from the paper, and the quotation has been replaced with the right one. RETRACTED — the entry itself was wrong; it stays on the page, marked, with the reason, rather than being deleted. WITHDRAWN AND REPLACED — the entry was wrong, and a corrected version of it appears in the entries below. Each mark carries its own reason, in brackets, because the reasons differ from one entry to the next. An entry we have WITHDRAWN is removed from this page and kept in the record, with its reason. A line reading Audit and a date is a later re-reading of the entry against its whole sentence: DOUBTFUL means it was kept, and the reason says what is loose about it. Quotation marks inside the tagger's sentence. Where a tag is the tagger's own sentence, a phrase in quotation marks inside it is borrowed from the paper — the tagger's wording around it is not. The paper's own sentence is the evidence quote for that row; on this page it is withheld with the article, and the article is at its publisher. Nothing inside quotation marks anywhere on this page is ours: if it is quoted, it is the paper's. Whose words a concept carries. A concept entry records a term the paper itself uses, so the term, the sense given for it, and its evidence are the paper's own words, quoted where the paper fixes them. This is the opposite of a sense entry in the tag table, which is the tagger's sentence about how the paper uses a term. Where a concept entry could not be grounded in the paper's words, the entry says so on its own row.
Other fields define these differently the same word, defined another way in another discipline
logistic regression 3 fields · standard deviation 3 fields · gender 2 fields · confidence interval 2 fields

Tags on this paper

Every tag the record carries, each linking to every other paper in the corpus that carries it. A tag appears here whether or not its words occur in the article — the spans below are only the ones a sentence in this paper licenses. Of the 5 concept tags on this paper, all 5 are grounded in a quoted sentence.
alethic modality deontic properties procedural principles rule of law Rule of Law Index Judgments about possible laws are generated from a prototype or essentialized concept of law, assembled from simpler concepts such as norm, fairness and punishment, that is only weakly tied to experience of actual laws Asking about possible rather than actual laws shifts attention from surface features to the deeper criteria for category membership, such as the purpose or moral dimension of law Prescriptive reasoning bleeds into descriptive judgment: asked whether laws necessarily have a property, participants also weigh whether that property is desirable — a mechanism the paper proposes and then partly disconfirms alethic modals intuitive jurisprudence endorsement country procedural principle interpretation of the task existential statements modal statements age gender legal background logistic regression logistic regression models predicting the probability mixed-effects logistic regression mixed-effects logistic regression model ... crossed random effects mixed-effects linear regression mixed-effects linear regression models with country as a random effect odds ratio chi-squared confidence interval latent profile analysis latent profile analyses statistical power analysis correlation moderately correlated standard deviation behavioural-experiment

Legend

relation to other workclaim_relationshow this paper stands to another: agrees, contradicts, extends, qualifies
claim typeclaim_typethe shape of the claim: existence, mechanism, method, critique, prediction, null
concept edgeconcept_edgesan asserted relation between two concepts, with the sentence asserting it
conceptconceptsan idea the paper works with, quoted where the paper uses it
content tagcontent_tagsa finding, definition, quantity, statistic or variable named in the paper
controlcontrolsan experiment run to eliminate a rival explanation
limitationlimitationswhat the paper says its evidence cannot support
mechanismmechanismshow the reported effect is said to come about
methodmethodhow the paper produced its evidence
phenomenonphenomenonthe effect or regularity under study
sensesensesa distinct use of a term, quoted where the paper fixes it
transfertransfersa method or concept carried in from another field

The paper

The full text is not reproduced here. This article is not cleared for redistribution, so the page carries the tag layer only. Its evidence sentences are withheld; the grounding status remains with each tag, and the article itself is at https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13024. The reading view exists for the papers whose licence permits it.

Every tag on this page

claim_relations 2 · claim_type 1 · concept_edges 1 · concepts 5 · content_tags 46 · controls 1 · limitations 8 · mechanisms 3 · method 1 · phenomenon 1 · senses 5 · transfers 1

Relations on this page carry a quotation for the claim. Where a relation was separately evidenced — and so tested against the vocabulary for its type — the row says so; none of 1 relation here carry that mark. The rest are the tagger’s reading of the sentence quoted beside them.

facettagfieldconf.whose words
claim_typeexistence
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
claim_typethe paper's words
phenomenonlay beliefs about procedural constraints on law
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
phenomenonthe paper's words
methodbehavioural-experiment
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
methodthe paper's words
mechanismsmechanisms
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
mechanisms[0]the tagger's words
mechanismsmechanisms
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
mechanisms[1]the tagger's words
mechanismsmechanisms
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
mechanisms[2]the tagger's words
limitationsThe study documents the effect but not the cognitive mechanism producing the contradictory beliefs.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
what this limits: any mechanistic reading: OUR STUDY ... AFFORDED LIMITED INSIGHT INTO THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES THAT ENGENDER CONFLICTING BELIEFS
limitations[0]the tagger's words
limitationsPrescriptive thinking was measured only by explicit self-report, leaving unconscious routes untested.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
what this limits: the prescriptive-thinking measure: WE ASSESSED PARTICIPANTS' ENGAGEMENT IN PRESCRIPTIVE THINKING THROUGH THEIR EXPLICIT REPORTS, [which] LEAVES OPEN UNCONSCIOUS PATHWAYS
limitations[1]the tagger's words
limitationsEffect size varied substantially by country, which may indicate cultural variability or sampling differences.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
what this limits: the cross-cultural generality claim: THE MAGNITUDE OF THE EFFECT VARIED SUBSTANTIALLY ACROSS COUNTRIES, WHICH MAY IMPLY SOME DEGREE OF CULTURAL VARIABILITY - or sampling differences, and the study cannot choose
limitations[2]the tagger's words
limitationsThe effect is documented but its mechanism is not: the study is stated to give limited insight into the processes that produce the conflicting beliefs.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
what this limits: explaining WHY people hold both beliefs: the authors state the study evidences the phenomenon but gives limited insight into the psychological processes producing it
limitations[3]1.0the tagger's words
limitationsOnly explicit reports of prescriptive thinking were measured, so an unconscious route from moral considerations to judgements of possibility remains open by the authors' own statement.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
what this limits: the claim that the effect is not moral in origin: the authors rule this out only for prescriptive thinking that participants could report, and say so
limitations[4]1.0the tagger's words
limitationsThe cross-country variation in effect size cannot be attributed: culture and sampling method are confounded, because recruitment differed substantially across sites.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
what this limits: reading the country differences as cultural variability: the authors state sampling methods differed substantially across sites, so the variation might instead reflect sample composition or acquiescence
limitations[5]1.0the tagger's words
limitationsThe two-way classification of legal systems used to select sites is reported by the authors as sometimes seen as too coarse.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
what this limits: the common-law versus civil-law contrast as the axis of cross-cultural comparison: the paper notes the distinction is sometimes seen as overly coarse
limitations[6]1.0the tagger's words
limitationsThe per-site sample target was not met everywhere.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
what this limits: per-country estimates: the stated minimum of 100 per condition per site
limitations[7]1.0the tagger's words
transfersan axiom of modal logic — that what is actual is thereby possible — is imported to turn the two response patterns into a demonstrable contradiction and so to derive the experimental prediction
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
transfers[0]the tagger's words
controlsthe direction of the finding fixed in advance by a REGISTERED PREDICTION
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
eliminates: post-hoc reinterpretation of whichever way the result fell - the paper reports confirming its prediction AND a paradoxical second finding beside it, so the registration is doing work rather than decorating a clean story · outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation): held
controls[0]0.9the tagger's words
conceptsalethic modality
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
concepts[0]the paper's words
conceptsdeontic properties
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
concepts[1]the paper's words
conceptsprocedural principles
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
concepts[2]the paper's words
conceptsrule of law
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
also in: rule of law
concepts[3]the paper's words
conceptsRule of Law Index
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
concepts[4]the paper's words
sensesmodality - alethic: necessity and possibility, what could be the case
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[0]1.0the tagger's words
sensesmodality - deontic: permission and obligation, what is allowed or desirable — and the paper states that although the two are easily distinguished IN THOUGHT, natural language expresses them imperfectly
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[1]1.0the tagger's words
senseslaw - the concept: what participants report laws NECESSARILY are, which the paper reports as defying their own grasp of how legal systems actually work
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[2]1.0the tagger's words
senseslaw - the practice: what participants report actual laws are like, where the same people acknowledge the principles are violated
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[3]1.0the tagger's words
sensesrule of law - operationalised as a survey index scoring nations on eight dimensions
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[4]1.0the tagger's words
claim_relationsextends → Donelson and Hannikainen (2020)
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
claim_relations[0]the tagger's words
claim_relationsbuilds-on → Donelson and Hannikainen (2020) materials
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
claim_relations[1]the tagger's words
concept_edgesrule of law —operationalised-as→ Rule of Law Index
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
strength of the relation: 1
concept_edges[0]the tagger's words
content_tagslogistic regression
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.statistics[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsmixed-effects logistic regression
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.statistics[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsmixed-effects linear regression
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.statistics[2]the tagger's words
content_tagsodds ratio
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
also in: odds ratio
content_tags.statistics[3]the tagger's words
content_tagschi-squared
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
also in: chi-squared
content_tags.statistics[4]the tagger's words
content_tagsconfidence interval
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.statistics[5]the tagger's words
content_tagslatent profile analysis
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.statistics[6]the tagger's words
content_tagsstatistical power analysis
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.statistics[7]the tagger's words
content_tagscorrelation
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
also in: correlation
content_tags.statistics[8]the tagger's words
content_tagsstandard deviation
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.statistics[9]the tagger's words
content_tagsAs preregistered, people both denied that such laws can exist and affirmed, paradoxically, that they do.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsParticipants asked about actual laws said those laws violate the procedural principles about half the time, whereas participants asked about possible laws overwhelmingly denied that the same principles could be violated.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe condition effect held in each country analysed on its own.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[2]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe effect also held separately for each of the eight procedural principles tested.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[3]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe size of the effect nevertheless differed by country, being weakest in India and the United Kingdom and strongest in Brazil and Poland.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[4]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe size of the effect also differed by principle, being smallest for the generality principle and largest for the consistency principle.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[5]the tagger's words
content_tagsA post-test showed the manipulation worked as intended on the existential side: the 'There are laws' wording was read as a question about what laws are usually like in the respondent's experience.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[6]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe modal wording, however, was read in two ways at once — as asking what laws must be like to count as law, and as asking what laws ideally should be like.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[7]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe predicted effect held even among the minority who reported a selective interpretation of the modal wording.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[8]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe preregistered prediction held robustly across age groups, genders, and lawyers and non-lawyers.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[9]the tagger's words
content_tagsPeople believe laws necessarily cannot punish past conduct retroactively, be kept secret, or be incomprehensible, while also acknowledging that real laws break exactly these constraints.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[10]the tagger's words
content_tagsalethic modals
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.definitions[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsdeontic properties
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.definitions[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsRule of Law Index
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.definitions[3]the tagger's words
content_tagsintuitive jurisprudence
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.definitions[4]the tagger's words
content_tagsendorsement
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
also in: endorsement
content_tags.variables[2]the tagger's words
content_tagscountry
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
also in: country
content_tags.variables[3]the tagger's words
content_tagsprocedural principle
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.variables[4]the tagger's words
content_tagsinterpretation of the task
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.variables[5]the tagger's words
content_tagsexistential statements
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.variables[7]the tagger's words
content_tagsmodal statements
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.variables[8]the tagger's words
content_tagsage
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
also in: age
content_tags.variables[9]the tagger's words
content_tagsgender
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
also in: gender
content_tags.variables[10]the tagger's words
content_tagslegal background
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.variables[11]the tagger's words
content_tagsN = 3,054 — total participants in the between-subjects experiment
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.quantities[0]the tagger's words
content_tags11 — countries in which the experiment was administered
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.quantities[1]the tagger's words
content_tagspˆ = .54 vs pˆ = .81, OR = 3.74 — predicted probability of saying a principle is violated (Actual condition) versus could be violated (Possible condition), and the odds ratio between conditions
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.quantities[2]the tagger's words
content_tagsOR = 1.79 to OR = 13.97 — range of the condition effect across the eight principles, from the generality principle to the consistency principle
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.quantities[3]the tagger's words
content_tagsORs < 1.60 and ORs > 7.50 — smallest country-level effects (India, United Kingdom) versus largest (Brazil, Poland)
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.quantities[4]the tagger's words
content_tagsn = 352 — participants in the Actual condition forming the minority latent profile who reported reflecting only on empirical facts about law
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.quantities[5]the tagger's words
content_tagsOR = 3.46, z = 11.65, p < .001 — size of the condition effect within the minority profiles who interpreted the task selectively
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.quantities[6]the tagger's words
content_tagsβ = .20, odds ratio ≥ 1.40, α = .05 — power, minimum detectable effect and alpha level targeted by the planned sample size
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.quantities[7]the tagger's words
content_tagstarget n = 200/site — minimum sample size planned per field site (100 per condition), reached everywhere except Cambodia
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.quantities[8]the tagger's words
content_tagsN = 3,054 — total participants across 11 countries
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.quantities[9]the tagger's words
content_tagsOR = 3.74 — odds of endorsing a procedural principle in the Possible condition versus the Actual condition
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.quantities[10]the tagger's words
content_tagsOR = 1.79 to OR = 13.97 — range of the condition effect across the eight principles: smallest for generality, largest for consistency
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.quantities[11]the tagger's words

Interpretive choices

Tags that could not be placed in the text:

What was deliberately not tagged, and why, is recorded per paper by the tagger. Where a paper has no such record, this page says so rather than implying that nothing was declined.

© 2026 Shir Sivroni · ORCID 0009-0000-2597-2824