Omgang met regels

Abstract

Regulatory pressure causes hundreds of millions in economic damage each year and causes great social unrest. For decades, successive cabinets have had the ambition to reduce regulatory pressure. But despite all their diligence, all their efforts to involve all kinds of forces from society in regulations, all the research and the use of a variety of instruments, they have not succeeded in reducing the regulatory pressure as experienced by society. Regulatory pressure has so far mainly been approached from an economic-instrumental perspective. Within this perspective, citizens weigh the advantages of rules against the disadvantages. But is that the only way in which people experience regulatory pressure?

Epstein's Cognitive-experiential self-theory shows that our brain has developed in the course of evolution in such a way that there are people who trust their reason more and that there are people who rely more intuitively on their experience. This dissertation shows that rational people deal with rules very differently than experience-oriented people and indicates the consequences this has for the experience of regulatory pressure. Regulators who want to direct behaviour in our society must balance a rational experience of rules with an experiential experience of rules.