Relative Judgments

Leibovitch, Adi

doi:10.1086/687376

Cited by 27 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Moreover, many past studies have used experiments to find causal relations among emotions, impulses, heuristics, and biased decisions in laboratory settings (e.g., Englich et al ; Guthrie et al ; Kahan , ; Nadler & McDonnell ; Rachlinski et al ; Sood & Darley ; Wistrich et al ). Researchers using more realistic settings (Spamann & Klöhn ) and using real‐world empirical evidence (Leibovitch ) have confirmed that the judicial decision patterns found in the laboratory are similar to those found in the real world. These findings reduce our concerns over external validity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…Our findings contribute to the literature on the biases in judicial decision making. Previous studies have found a wide range of decision biases, induced by emotions, impulses, and heuristics (e.g., Guthrie et al ; Kahan , ; Rachlinski et al ; Wistrich et al ; Leibovitch ; Spamann & Klöhn ; Liu ). The fact that one set of rules may apply to a sympathetic litigant and another set to an unsympathetic litigant certainly poses a challenge to the rule of law.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Legal Techniques for Rationalizing Biased Judicial Decisions: Evidence from Experiments with Real Judges

Liu¹,

2019

J Empirical Legal Studies

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Judges rarely reveal their real reasoning in their opinions when they are influenced by factors that they know they should not consider. The natural next question is how, when a judge is improperly influenced, he or she reasons to justify a biased decision. In a set of experiments using incumbent Chinese judges, we first replicated the findings of previous studies that showed judges can be influenced by extra-legal factors. More importantly, we showed that judges may employ a range of legal techniques to rationalize decision biases: they interpret legal standards and legal concepts strategically, finesse the applicability of law, infer or deny causation and foreseeability, and draw different conclusions from facts. Our findings provide a more realistic understanding of how judges behave, and cast doubt on reasoned elaboration as a guarantee of judicial transparency and trustworthiness. for helpful comments and discussions. For excellent research assistance, we thank Yanyan Zhang. We are grateful to all of the participating judges in our studies.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legal Techniques for Rationalizing Biased Judicial Decisions: Evidence from Experiments with Real Judges

Liu¹,

2019

J Empirical Legal Studies

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“…Often they are personal attributes, such as defendant race, gender, age, or attractiveness (Devine et al, 2001). Several decades of research in cognitive psychology has demonstrated myriad heuristics and biases that allow for quick and efficient decision making but that also have serious shortcomings for maximally effective reasoning (Kahneman, 2011), and recent research has also begun to explore the ways in which evaluations might be influenced by the cognitive limitations of the decision makers themselves (e.g., Leibovitch, 2016a; Leibovitch, 2016b). The present research explored how one such factor, contrast effects, might influence grand jury decision making (Study 1) and prisoner rehabilitation evaluations (Study 2).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many studies have been undertaken, for instance, to investigate how widespread societal problems like stereotypes and prejudice might affect different aspects of the judicial system, but others have focused on more specific phenomena like the effect of pretrial publicity or the effect of exposure to legal drama on television (Kramer, Kerr, & Carroll, 1990;Ley, Jankowski, & Brewer, 2012;Steblay, Besirevic, Fulero, & Jimenez-Lorente, 1999). Other research has shown that even trained professionals may fall back on similar extralegal factors when under stress, preoccupied, or mentally overloaded (Leibovitch, 2016a;Leibovitch, 2016b;Nugent, 1994). Taken together, these lines of research demonstrate that heuristic processing is common and could likely be explored in either laypersons or professionals.…”

Section: Heuristics In Judgment and Decision Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A social judgment? Extralegal contrast effects in hypothetical legal decision making.

Butterfield

Bitter

2019

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law

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Social judgments in ambiguous situations often rely on heuristics and biases, and legal decision makers are often faced with evidence that does not clearly favor one decision over another. Across two studies, we tested whether one extralegal factor, contrast cases, influenced decision making when judicial factors were held constant. In Study 1, participants (n = 100) evaluated whether an imagined prosecutor had sufficient evidence to send the same three target cases to trial. Before deciding these cases, though, the participants first evaluated cases with either relatively stronger or weaker evidence than the targets. Those in the weak-case comparison group were significantly more likely to send target cases to trial, and they believed the prosecutor had a stronger case. In Study 2, all participants (n = 100) evaluated hypothetical parole applications, but the method was otherwise the same as that used in Study 1. The same contrastoriented pattern emerged. Participants who first viewed weaker parole applications rated the identical targets as significantly more rehabilitated. Taken together, the results of these two studies suggest that contrast effects may be one extralegal factor involved in shaping individuallevel social judgments made in legal contexts such as grand juries and parole boards.

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“…In these and in similar professional contexts, cases are presented in sequence for mere practical or operational reasons, and the sequential structure should have no bearing on decisions. However, decisions made in sequence often differ from those made in isolation (e.g., Bhargava & Fisman, 2014; Chen et al, 2016; Cohen et al, 2020; Hartzmark & Shue, 2018; Leibovitch, 2016; Read & Loewenstein, 1995; Simonsohn & Gino, 2013; Simonson, 1990; Stewart, 2009; Sunstein et al, 2001). One factor that past studies have shown could potentially—and undesirably—impact decisions concerning completely independent cases in a sequence is the serial position of the case.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Motivational drivers for serial position effects: Evidence from high-stakes legal decisions.

Plonsky¹,

Chen²,

Netzer³

et al. 2023

Journal of Applied Psychology

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Experts and employees in many domains make multiple similar but independent decisions in sequence. Often, the serial position of the case in the sequence influences the decision. Explanations for these serial position effects focus on the role of decision-makers’ fatigue, but these effects emerge also when fatigue is unlikely. Here, we suggest that serial position effects can emerge due to decision-makers’ motivation to be or appear consistent. For example, to avoid having inconsistencies revealed, decisions may become more favorable toward the side that is more likely to put a decision under scrutiny. As a context, we focus on the legal domain in which many high-stakes decisions are made in sequence and in which there are clear institutional processes of decision scrutiny. We analyze two field data sets: 386,109 U.S. immigration judges’ decisions on asylum requests and 20,796 jury decisions in 18th century London criminal court. We distinguish between five mechanisms that can drive serial position effects and examine their predictions in these settings. We find that consistent with motivation-based explanations of serial position effects, but inconsistent with fatigue-based explanations, decisions become more lenient as a function of serial position, and the effect persists over breaks. We further find, as is predicted by motivational accounts, that the leniency effect is stronger among more experienced decision-makers. By elucidating the different drivers of serial position effects, our investigation clarifies why they are common, when they are expected, and how to reduce them.

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Relative Judgments

Cited by 27 publications

References 18 publications

Legal Techniques for Rationalizing Biased Judicial Decisions: Evidence from Experiments with Real Judges

Legal Techniques for Rationalizing Biased Judicial Decisions: Evidence from Experiments with Real Judges

A social judgment? Extralegal contrast effects in hypothetical legal decision making.

Motivational drivers for serial position effects: Evidence from high-stakes legal decisions.

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