Mind the Economy/Justice 117

Laws do not work when they are fearful, but when they are credible

31 August 2025

11' min read

There is a magic ring that has the power to make the wearer invisible. This is what Plato writes about in the second book of the Republic. It tells of Gige, a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia. After an earthquake Gige discovers in a crevice in the ground an ancient bronze horse inside which lies the lifeless body of a giant; on his finger is a golden ring. Gige takes possession of it. He discovers, almost immediately and almost by chance, that the ring is endowed with an extraordinary power: by turning the bezel inwards, in fact, whoever wears it on his finger can become invisible. Gige takes advantage of this: he seduces the queen, conspires against the king, kills him and takes over his kingdom. And what would we do, Plato asks us, if our actions were invisible to others? Would we still try to act according to justice or, like Gige, free from the fear of being discovered and punished, would we be driven inevitably towards evil? Plato enacts the myth in the context of a dialogue between Glaucon and Socrates. The former is convinced that most people only practise justice out of social convention, for fear of punishment and dishonour. The ring of Giges serves to show just this: justice is not an intrinsic good, but a necessary compromise to live in society. Socrates, on the contrary, rejects this reductive view. He argues that justice is, first and foremost, a condition of the soul. The unjust man, even if invisible and unpunished, experiences an inner disharmony. His soul is dominated by desires and impulses that enslave it. To be righteous, therefore, also means to live well in oneself and for oneself, irrespective of external gazes. That is why one who is truly righteous, even wearing the ring of Gige, would not choose the path of evil.

Plato in the lab.

The myth of Gige brings us back to a classic and fundamental question: why should we behave the right way when no one sees us? It is the same question that we find at the heart of a complex piece of research that Simon Gächter, Lucas Molleman and Daniele Nosenzo have just published in Nature Human Behaviour and entitled 'Why people follow rules'. What are the reasons why people follow rules? And of all possible reasons, which ones exert the greatest influence? The possible reasons are many, they said, and the authors summarise them with the acronym CRISP. With their study, they want to understand to what extent 'conformity' to rules (C) depends on respect (R) for authority or tradition and intrinsic motivations that make the rule perceived as a 'deontic constraint', i.e. an unconditional and non-instrumental duty. A second possible reason is that determined by material incentives (I); that is, when people comply with a rule only to avoid the costs of sanctions resulting from a possible violation. But people may also choose to comply with rules by virtue of social expectations (S); because they expect others to also comply with the rules and believe that others expect the same behaviour from them. Finally, many may be driven by pro-social motivations (P); they are those who consider the impact their choices may have on the well-being of those around them. Which of all these is the main reason?

To attempt to answer these questions, the three researchers designed a series of experiments involving more than fourteen thousand volunteers. The basic paradigm of these experiments is the so-called 'traffic light task'. Each participant has to move via the computer cursor an on-screen cursor from a certain area on the left to another area on the right. Marking off one area from the other is a vertical line with a traffic light. Each player starts with a certain amount of real money, which decreases as time passes. The more time you take to move the point from the start on the left to the finish on the right, the less money you will earn at the end of the experiment. The best thing to do, therefore, if you want to maximise your gain is to move the point from left to right as quickly as possible. But there is the traffic light that first is red and only after a while turns green. And in the instructions for the game the experimenters have expressly written that the rule is not to go through red lights. No one can stop you; there is no one to control you. It's like wearing Gige's ring, but you know the rule is there. Those who choose to run red lights will gain a lot, those who choose to wait for the green light will lose about half of their initial allocation.

This experimental paradigm is designed to generate a tension between the desire to comply and the incentive not to comply. Between the intrinsic benefit of doing the right thing and the monetary cost of doing so. The standard economic models on this are clear: in the absence of sanctions, one hundred per cent of individuals will break the rule: everyone will run a red light. What emerges from the data of Gächter and associates is actually quite different: the percentage of those who choose to abide by the rule is between 65 and 57 per cent. Most of the participants stop at the traffic lights even if this means actually giving up part of the income. The result was replicated several times under very different conditions and with samples of participants from different backgrounds and nationalities.

It seems that most of us do not behave like Gige. It seems that Glaucon was wrong and Socrates, once again, was right.

But as we have said, intrinsic respect for the rule and monetary incentives, in the CRISP model, are but two of the possible reasons that may influence the propensity to comply. This is why the study includes two further sets of experiments. In the one studying the influence of social expectations and conformity, each participant's 'normative' and 'descriptive' beliefs about the behaviour of others are measured. The extent to which each individual believes that others think it is right to comply with the rule (normative expectations) and how much each individual thinks the rule will actually be complied with (descriptive expectations). If social norms are one of the reasons that guide our choices, then these should be correlated with what we expect others to think and do. And indeed, the data show that when there are few people who believe it is right to conform - between 0 and 20 per cent - the level of conformity is around 35 per cent. But when the belief is between 80 and 100 per cent, then compliance with the rule increases, reaching 56 per cent. Overall, the results of this second experiment suggest that compliance rates reflect a combination of unconditional rule compliance and social influence.

The good of others and the fear of sanctions

There are two other issues to be addressed and they are those relating to the role of possible sanctions and the effect our choices may have on others. This is the subject of the fourth series of experiments conducted by Gächter, Molleman and Nosenzo. In order to test the second aspect - that of social externalities - each subject is informed that the experimenters have donated $1 to the Red Cross in his or her name but that this donation will be withdrawn if, in the 'traffic light task', he or she decides to violate the rule and run a red light. This treatment creates a conflict between the desire to gain as much as possible, the desire to comply with the rule for intrinsic reasons, but now the cost of knowing that our eventual wrongdoing will have reduced someone else's welfare is also introduced. The question of penalties, on the other hand, is dealt with in a treatment in which participants are informed that there is a certain probability, 10 or 90, per cent depending on the variant, that any red light they run will be discovered. In the event of an offence they will receive a fine equal to the loss of all money earned up to that moment.

How do volunteers react? The data show that the presence of a social benefit - the donation to the Red Cross - raises the level of compliance by a further 6.8 percentage points over the initial level, while the introduction of sanctions generates an increase - in the case of 90 per cent probability - of up to 23.1 per cent, bringing total compliance to 77.8 per cent. Sanctions count, but as can be seen, they are not sufficient to generate a 100 per cent compliance level, as might have been expected.

The reasons for respect

In summary, then, the data show us that a substantial proportion of people - around 22 per cent - follow the rule unconditionally, even when transgressing it would be more economically advantageous and would not entail negative consequences for anyone else. Under conditions of anonymity, about 65 per cent choose, in fact, to abide by the rule. This suggests the existence of a deep inner disposition to respect the rules.

Alongside this, social expectations have also been shown to exert considerable weight. When people believe that the majority consider it right to follow the rule, or believe that the majority actually follow it, their conformity increases significantly. Going from the lowest level (0% - 20%) to the highest level (80% - 100%) of such beliefs increases compliance by about 20 percentage points. Direct observation of others' behaviour also has a similar effect: seeing others comply or violate the rule profoundly influences one's own choice, confirming how normativity is an eminently intersubjective phenomenon.

The prosocial elements, then, i.e. the awareness that one's transgression may harm others, push further towards conformity, but to a lesser extent.

Finally, external incentives work, but not as much as one might think. A mild threat of punishment does not substantially alter behaviour; only severe and credible sanctions - total requisition of earnings with a 90% probability - increase compliance significantly, but still to a lesser extent than the strength of intrinsic respect and social expectations.

When we put all the results of the various treatments together, what emerges is a composite mosaic of plural motivations showing why human beings decide to follow a rule. The CRISP conceptual framework - intrinsic respect for rules, external incentives, social expectations and prosocial preferences - takes shape not so much as a rigid and mechanical list, but as a web of moral and pragmatic drives coexisting together in the human soul.

Perhaps the most surprising finding is the strength of intrinsic respect. Even in the absence of sanctions, even when no one is observing, even when self-interest would suggest transgression, a substantial proportion of people continue to abide by the rule. This core of spontaneous obedience appears as a kind of loyalty to the very form of the rule, an echo of what philosophers call 'duty' or 'deontic constraint'.

Alongside this core, social expectations operate as an inner mirror: individuals shape their conduct according to what they believe others consider appropriate (normative beliefs) or what they imagine others actually do (descriptive beliefs). This is not just a fear of disapproval, but a need for consistency with the social fabric, almost a desire to harmonise with a collective rhythm.

Prosocial incentives and motivations complete the picture: when following the rule produces benefits for others or when the threat of punishment becomes concrete, compliance increases. But what is striking is that these factors, while important, appear ancillary: they reinforce a tendency that is already present, not create it out of thin air. In this way, the study seems to point to the existence of an internalised social normativity.

The Normativity of Law

In the 20th century, reflection on the normativity of law was articulated around three major perspectives, marking three different ways of understanding the legal bond. For Hans Kelsen, the great Austrian legal philosopher and theorist of legal positivism, the normativity of law is based entirely on the validity of the legal system. Law does not describe facts but prescribes behaviour, it has no need of morality or consent. What makes a norm binding, in fact, is not its being 'just', but the fact that it belongs to a normative chain that finds its ultimate foundation in a fundamental norm, the Grundnorm, which is not explained but assumed. Like a Euclidean axiom from which other propositions are logically derived, the Grundnorm justifies every other norm, guaranteeing the internal coherence of the entire system. Normativity is thus a fact of structure. Law obliges because it is valid, and validity depends on its place in the system. A radical position that also greatly influenced 20th century legal thought, but which certainly was not exempt from criticism.

Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart, professor of law at Oxford, takes a radically different tack. According to Hart, in fact, the value of normativity cannot be fully grasped without looking at concrete social practices. What makes a legal rule binding, in other words, is the fact that it is recognised and accepted as a criterion of conduct by a community of citizens. This is not a logical presupposition, but a shared social convention that makes it possible to speak of law. Ronald Dworkin pushes reflection on the issue of normativity even further. In his view, the normativity of law is neither exhausted in the formal structure nor in social practice, because law is intrinsically intertwined with moral principles. A norm is binding not only because it is valid or recognised, but because it emerges as the result of a fabric of values and principles that give coherence and justification to the system itself. Thus, in the confrontation between Kelsen, Hart and Dworkin, the theme of normativity becomes a real philosophical fracture line: from Kelsen's formalism, which roots compulsoriness in the system itself, to Hart's conventionalism, which leads it back to social praxis, to Dworkin's jusmoralism, which makes its ultimate meaning derive from moral principles and justice.

Beyond coercion there is trust

Reasoning on the subject, in his recent La legge della fiducia (Laterza, 2021), Tommaso Greco emphasises another aspect, overlooked by the main previous positions. It is the fact that 'law has a relational dimension that not only comes before the coercive one, but also serves to justify it. We obey rules because we experience them as part of a fiduciary relationship, Greco tells us. In the absence of trust and mutual recognition, the rule remains a dead letter despite its internal validity. And it is this fiduciary bond that is one of the central elements that the study by Gächter, Molleman and Nosenzo seems to bring out empirically: people respect rules not only out of fear of punishment, but even more so when they perceive them as part of a shared order that gives meaning to community life. This means that we do not just react to rules individually, but rather tend to coordinate on mutual expectations. If I believe that others will also respect the rule, I will be more inclined to do so. If I believe others will violate it, the temptation to transgress will increase for me as well. It is the mechanism of 'multiple balances' that our legislators seem to completely ignore: society oscillates between cooperation and disobedience according to shared expectations and not according to the extent of prohibitions and severity of sanctions.

Rules do not work when they are fearful, but when they are credible. Trust, not coercion, is the true cement of life in common. And at a time when trust is in short supply - in international allies, in domestic politics, in science, in education, in health care, in the media, even in the basic rules of common living - this message seems of disarming relevance and urgency.

Plato, with the myth of Gige, warned us that true justice is measured when no one is watching. Today, the experiments of Gächter, Molleman and Nosenzo, along with many others, show us that those who decide to 'do the right thing', even away from prying eyes, are many more than we might think; certainly many more than the newspapers and TV news tell us. Many more than those who appear in the prevailing narrative. And they are so many not because they are afraid of punishment, but because they trust others.

Politics and institutions, if they want to keep in touch with reality, to be effective and useful, cannot avoid reflecting on this point: a leadership that entrusts its resilience only to sanctions and threats will end up rediscovering itself as a giant with feet of clay. What marks the quality of life in our communities is not the number of cameras installed on the streets and in kindergartens, as some would have it, but the trust we are able to have in the rules themselves, in the credibility of those who issue them, and in the willingness of our fellow citizens to respect them. Justice, the real kind, does not come from external control, but from the ability to transform a rule into a felt and shared duty.

(*) Professor of Economics (13/A2). Department of Economics and Business - University of Cagliari