Of Mice and Lawyers. Learning from Calhoun’s Rodent Utopia

There is good data available to demonstrate that before starting law school, law students are healthier than the general population, both physically and mentally. They drink less than other young people, use fewer substances, suffer less from depression, and start school with a good sense of self and values. Then something goes astray for many of them. Today, according to some reports, lawyers have the highest rate of depression of any occupational group. The results of one study showed that more than one in five practicing attorneys are problem drinkers and 75 per cent of attorneys skipped the survey section on drug use as if it wasn’t there. Lawyers, as individuals and as a profession, seem to experience a behavioral sink.

Behavioral sink is a term coined by ethologist John Calhoun to describe a collapse in behavior that can result from overcrowding. The term and concept originate in a series of experiments in overpopulation that Calhoun conducted on rats and mice from the 1940s onwards. Calhoun’s work, and his utopian mouse community, Universe 25, became an animal model of societal collapse, and a touchstone of urban sociology and psychology in general. According to Calhoun’s findings, no matter how sophisticated we consider ourselves to be, once the number of individuals capable of filling roles significantly exceeds the number of roles available, the disruption of social organization will follow. Individuals under these circumstances will be out of touch with reality to the point of being incapable even of alienation. Their most complex behaviors will become fragmented. The creation and application of ideas appropriate for life in a post-industrial digital society will be thwarted.