Coordination Favors Legal Textualism by Suppressing Moral Valuation

A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a general tendency to rely on a rule’s text over its purpose when deciding which acts violate the rule. This tendency’s strength varied markedly across (k = 13) field sites, owing to cultural differences in the impact of moral appraisals on judgments of rule violation. Next, we observed that legal experts were more strongly inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether, and they consequently demonstrated stronger textualist tendencies than did laypeople. Finally, we examined a plausible mechanism for the emergence of textualism in a two-player coordination game: Incentives to coordinate without communicating reinforced participants’ reliance on rules’ literal meaning. Together, these studies (total N = 5109) help clarify the origins and allure of legal textualism. While diverse legal actors may have varied personal assessments of rules’ moral purposes, rules’ literal meanings serve as clear focal points—easily identifiable points of agreement that enable coordination among diverse agents and judges.