Forms of Commitment: Comparing Written and Verbal Consent in Three Psychological Experiments

Consent forms, often hailed as a means of protecting vulnerable individuals, are ubiquitous. We argue that consent forms are likely to activate people’s “contract schemas”—mental scripts implicitly called upon whenever people encounter documents that resemble contracts. Across three experiments, we identify the psychological baggage that accompanies contracts and elucidate how these problematic associations bedevil consent forms, which serve a distinct purpose. In Study 1, laboratory participants were asked to consent to an unrestricted search of their smartphones; those whose consent was sought in writing reported feeling more pressured to consent than participants approached verbally. In Study 2, participants regarded written consent as more binding than oral consent across a variety of domains. In Study 3, the introduction of written consent led people to downgrade the importance of verbal consent. In light of these findings, we call for greater judicial sensitivity to how ordinary people understand consent formalities. “The signature is the moral person himself, or at least the legal person.” (Jack Goody [1986, p. 73], quoted in Jacob 2007, p. 249)