Free speech and personality rights: measuring attitudes and predicting decisions

• Autor(a) principal: Almeida, Guilherme da Franca Couto Fernandes de
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Leite, Fábio Carvalho, Hannikainen, Ivar Allan Rodriguez
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Espaço Jurídico/Espaço Jurídico Journal of Law
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.unoesc.edu.br/espacojuridico/article/view/20449
• topic: Free Speech; Personality Rights; Empirical Legal Studies; Law and Psychology; Liberdade de expressão; Honra e Imagem; Estudos Empíricos em Direito; Direito e Psicologia

Conflicts between freedom of speech and personality rights in Brazil are regulated by vague standards – a vagueness that is often cherished by proponents of particularism. In this paper, we introduce a psychometric scale that allows researchers to capture individual differences in attitudes towards these conflicts. Throughout 4 studies, we develop, validate and apply this research instrument to test specific hypotheses. Our results show that both lay people and lawyers’ scores influence their decisions in cases concerning conflicts between free speech and personality rights (studies 1 and 2). Moreover, participants’ attitudes towards free speech and personality rights showed test-retest reliability (study 3). Finally, participants’ previously held attitudes towards those legal standards exert an influence over their judgments even when we account for morally relevant differences between cases (study 4).