Unbalanced
Extraneous factors in judicial decisions
Shai Danziger, Jonathan Levav & Liora Avnaim-Pesso
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Are judicial rulings based solely on laws and facts? Legal formalism holds that judges apply legal reasons to the facts of a case in a rational, mechanical, and deliberative manner. In contrast, legal realists argue that the rational application of legal reasons does not sufficiently explain the decisions of judges and that psychological, political, and social factors influence judicial rulings. We test the common caricature of realism that justice is "what the judge ate for breakfast" in sequential parole decisions made by experienced judges. We record the judges' two daily food breaks, which result in segmenting the deliberations of the day into three distinct "decision sessions." We find that the percentage of favorable rulings drops gradually from ≈65% to nearly zero within each decision session and returns abruptly to ≈65% after a break. Our findings suggest that judicial rulings can be swayed by extraneous variables that should have no bearing on legal decisions.
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Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults
Ryota Kanai, Tom Feilden, Colin Firth & Geraint Rees
Current Biology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Substantial differences exist in the cognitive styles of liberals and conservatives on psychological measures. Variability in political attitudes reflects genetic influences and their interaction with environmental factors. Recent work has shown a correlation between liberalism and conflict-related activity measured by event-related potentials originating in the anterior cingulate cortex. Here we show that this functional correlate of political attitudes has a counterpart in brain structure. In a large sample of young adults, we related self-reported political attitudes to gray matter volume using structural MRI. We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala. These results were replicated in an independent sample of additional participants. Our findings extend previous observations that political attitudes reflect differences in self-regulatory conflict monitoring and recognition of emotional faces by showing that such attitudes are reflected in human brain structure. Although our data do not determine whether these regions play a causal role in the formation of political attitudes, they converge with previous work to suggest a possible link between brain structure and psychological mechanisms that mediate political attitudes.
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The bigger one of the "Big Two"? Preferential processing of communal information
Andrea Abele & Susanne Bruckmüller
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
An important aim of person perception is to guide people in their actions towards others and an especially important question in this regard is whether to approach a target or not. A target's traits can be differentiated into the "Big Two" fundamental content dimensions of agency and communion. Four studies test the hypothesis that relative to agentic traits communal traits - which can also be conceptualized as "other-profitable" traits - are processed preferentially because they convey more information relevant for approach vs. avoidance decisions. Across four studies, we found consistent support for this preferential processing hypothesis. Communal trait words were recognized faster (Study 1) and categorized faster with regard to valence than agentic trait words (Study 2); communal traits were inferred faster from behavior descriptions than agentic traits (Study 3); and finally, communal traits were mentioned prior to agentic ones in spontaneous descriptions of another person (Study 4). Throughout these studies the stimuli's valence (positive or negative words or behaviors) did not moderate this processing speed advantage of communal information. Participants' responses in Study 4, however, were more valence-driven for the communion dimension than for the agency dimension.
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The omission effect in moral cognition: Toward a functional explanation
Peter DeScioli, Rebecca Bruening & Robert Kurzban
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Moral judgment involves much more than computations of the expected consequences of behavior. A prime example of the complexity of moral thinking is the frequently replicated finding that violations by omission are judged less morally wrong than violations by commission, holding intentions constant. Here we test a novel hypothesis: Omissions are judged less harshly because they produce little material evidence of wrongdoing. Evidence is crucial because moral accusations are potentially very costly unless supported by others. In our experiments, the omission effect was eliminated when physical evidence showed that an omission was chosen. Perpetrators who "opted out" by pressing a button that would clearly have no causal effects on the victim, rather than rescuing them, were judged as harshly as perpetrators who directly caused death. These results show that, to reduce condemnation, omissions must not only be noncausal, they must also leave little or no material evidence that a choice was made.
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Ron Broeders et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The literature on how people solve moral dilemmas often focuses on situations in which individuals have to make a decision where different moral rules are in conflict. In some of these situations, such as in footbridge dilemmas, people have to choose between sacrificing a few people in order to save many. The present research focuses on how people decide what to do in dilemmas involving conflicting moral rules. We propose that the rule that is cognitively most accessible during the decision making process (e.g., "Save lives" or "Do not kill") will influence how people solve these moral dilemmas. Three studies are reported that indeed demonstrate that the most accessible rule influences willingness to intervene within footbridge dilemmas. This effect is found even when the accessibility of the rule is induced subliminally.
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Has Legal Realism Damaged the Legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court?
James Gibson & Gregory Caldeira
Law & Society Review, March 2011, Pages 195-219
Abstract:
Does understanding how U.S. Supreme Court justices actually decide cases undermine the institutional legitimacy of the nation's highest court? To the extent that ordinary people recognize that the justices are deciding legal disputes on the basis of their own ideological biases and preferences (legal realism and the attitudinal model), the belief that the justices merely "apply" the law (mechanical jurisprudence and the myth of legality) is difficult to sustain. Although it is easy to see how the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, the most unaccountable of all American political institutions, is nurtured by the view that judicial decisionmaking is discretionless and mechanical, the sources of institutional legitimacy under legal realism are less obvious. Here, we demonstrate, using a nationally representative sample, that the American people understand judicial decisionmaking in realistic terms, that they extend legitimacy to the Supreme Court, and they do so under the belief that judges exercise their discretion in a principled and sincere fashion. Belief in mechanical jurisprudence is therefore not a necessary underpinning of judicial legitimacy; belief in legal realism is not incompatible with legitimacy.
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What You Feel Influences What You See: The Role of Affective Feelings in Resolving Binocular Rivalry
Eric Anderson, Erika Siegel & Lisa Feldman Barrett
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
It seems obvious that what you see influences what you feel, but what if the opposite were also true? What if how you feel can shape your visual experience? In this experiment, we demonstrate that the affective state of a perceiver influences the contents of visual awareness. Participants received positive, negative, and neutral affect inductions and then completed a series of binocular rivalry trials in which a face (smiling, scowling or neutral) was presented to one eye and a house to the other. The percepts "competed" for dominance in visual consciousness. We found, as predicted, that all faces (smiling, scowling, and neutral) were dominant for longer when perceivers experienced unpleasant affect compared to when they were in a neutral state (a social vigilance effect), although scowling faces increased their dominance when perceivers felt unpleasant (a relative negative congruence effect). Relatively speaking, smiling faces increased their dominance more when perceivers were experiencing pleasant affect (a positive congruence effect). These findings illustrate that the affective state of a perceiver serves as a context that influences the contents of consciousness.
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Gary Lewis & Timothy Bates
British Journal of Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research on the association of personality to political orientation has suggested that direct influences are modest. Here we used a personality system model in which direct influences on political behaviour flow from moral values, with personality mostly acting on these characteristic moral adaptations, rather than directly affecting political attitudes. Study 1 in 447 subjects supported this model, with significant effects on political orientation flowing from four of the five-factor model personality domains, but largely mediated through moral values concerning the importance of group order and individual rights. This personality system model was replicated in an independent study (n= 476) using a US sample and including a different measure of politics. Both studies support predictions that personality has significant effects on political attitudes, but that these are exerted largely via moral values. These findings help to explain inconsistencies in previous studies attempting to link personality to political orientation that have not included the intermediary level of values.
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Ideology is related to basic cognitive processes involved in attitude formation
Luigi Castelli & Luciana Carraro
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Ideological orientation shapes the perception of the social world and conservatism is associated to an increased weighting of negative over positive information. In the present work we explored how this ideology-based difference is also related to basic cognitive processes involved in attitude formation. In particular, we hypothesized that conservatives, as compared to liberals, would show stronger illusory correlation effects when negative information is relatively infrequent. In Study 1 we employed the typical illusory correlation paradigm (Hamilton & Gifford, 1976) and results confirmed the hypothesis: Conservatives developed more negative impressions toward the minority group and showed consistent memory biases. In Study 2, positive information represented the infrequent dimension and in this case no ideology-based difference was observed. Overall, findings indicate that when exposed to numerically different novel groups and negative behaviors are infrequent, illusory correlation effects are accentuated among individuals embracing conservative rather than liberal views of the world. This result may help to understand why conservatives tend to form more negative attitudes toward social minorities.
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Comparing Circuits: Are Some U.S. Courts of Appeals More Liberal or Conservative Than Others?
Andreas Broscheid
Law & Society Review, March 2011, Pages 171-194
Abstract:
This article investigates possible ideological differences between circuits of the U.S. Courts of Appeals. It looks at the distribution of three-judge panel ideologies on the circuits and at differences in decisionmaking patterns, testing several theoretical approaches to circuit differences: the attitudinalist approach, arguing that different judicial ideologies account for intercircuit differences; historical-institutionalist approaches that argue that circuit norms lead to differences in the proportion of conservative decisions and in the effects of judicial ideologies; and the rational-choice institutionalist argument that overall circuit preferences constrain three-judge panel decisions through the en banc process. Using a multilevel logit model, the study finds some support for the attitudinalist and historical-institutionalist accounts of circuit differences. It also finds that intercircuit ideological differences contribute comparatively little to the prediction of appeals court outcomes.
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Moral Concepts Set Decision Strategies to Abstract Values
Svenja Caspers et al.
PLoS ONE, April 2011, e18451
Abstract:
Persons have different value preferences. Neuroimaging studies where value-based decisions in actual conflict situations were investigated suggest an important role of prefrontal and cingulate brain regions. General preferences, however, reflect a superordinate moral concept independent of actual situations as proposed in psychological and socioeconomic research. Here, the specific brain response would be influenced by abstract value systems and moral concepts. The neurobiological mechanisms underlying such responses are largely unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a forced-choice paradigm on word pairs representing abstract values, we show that the brain handles such decisions depending on the person's superordinate moral concept. Persons with a predominant collectivistic (altruistic) value system applied a "balancing and weighing" strategy, recruiting brain regions of rostral inferior and intraparietal, and midcingulate and frontal cortex. Conversely, subjects with mainly individualistic (egocentric) value preferences applied a "fight-and-flight" strategy by recruiting the left amygdala. Finally, if subjects experience a value conflict when rejecting an alternative congruent to their own predominant value preference, comparable brain regions are activated as found in actual moral dilemma situations, i.e., midcingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Our results demonstrate that superordinate moral concepts influence the strategy and the neural mechanisms in decision processes, independent of actual situations, showing that decisions are based on general neural principles. These findings provide a novel perspective to future sociological and economic research as well as to the analysis of social relations by focusing on abstract value systems as triggers of specific brain responses.
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Christine Ruva, Christina Guenther & Angela Yarbrough
Criminal Justice and Behavior, May 2011, Pages 511-534
Abstract:
The authors investigated the effects of exposure to pretrial publicity (PTP) on impression formation, juror emotion, and predecisional distortion. Mock jurors read news articles containing negative (antidefendant) PTP or positive (prodefendant) PTP or unrelated articles. One week later, they viewed a videotaped murder trial and then made decisions about guilt. Jurors' emotions were measured three times during the experiment: before exposure to PTP, immediately after exposure to PTP, and immediately following the trial. Exposure to both positive and negative PTP significantly affected verdicts, perceptions of defendant credibility, emotion (anger and positive emotions), and predecisional distortion. Defendant's credibility, jurors' emotions, and predecisional distortion significantly mediated the effect of PTP on guilt ratings.
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Mapping the Racial Bias of the White Male Capital Juror: Jury Composition and the "Empathic Divide"
Mona Lynch & Craig Haney
Law & Society Review, March 2011, Pages 69-102
Abstract:
This article examines the nature of racial bias in the death sentencing process. After reviewing the various general explanations for the continued significance of race in capital cases, we report the results of an empirical study in which some aspects of racially biased death sentencing are examined in depth. Specifically, in a simulated capital penalty-phase trial setting where participants were assigned to small group "juries" and given an opportunity to deliberate, white male jurors were significantly more likely to sentence black defendants to death than were women and nonwhite jurors. This racialized pattern was explained in part by the differential evaluation of the case facts and the perceptions of the defendant that were made by the white male jurors. We discuss these findings in light of social psychological theories of contemporary racism, and we conclude that the demonstrated bias in capital jury settings should be understood as an interaction of several factors, including individual juror characteristics, group-level demographic composition, and group deliberation processes.
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Illusions of causality at the heart of pseudoscience
Helena Matute, Ion Yarritu & Miguel Vadillo
British Journal of Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Pseudoscience, superstitions, and quackery are serious problems that threaten public health and in which many variables are involved. Psychology, however, has much to say about them, as it is the illusory perceptions of causality of so many people that needs to be understood. The proposal we put forward is that these illusions arise from the normal functioning of the cognitive system when trying to associate causes and effects. Thus, we propose to apply basic research and theories on causal learning to reduce the impact of pseudoscience. We review the literature on the illusion of control and the causal learning traditions, and then present an experiment as an illustration of how this approach can provide fruitful ideas to reduce pseudoscientific thinking. The experiment first illustrates the development of a quackery illusion through the testimony of fictitious patients who report feeling better. Two different predictions arising from the integration of the causal learning and illusion of control domains are then proven effective in reducing this illusion. One is showing the testimony of people who feel better without having followed the treatment. The other is asking participants to think in causal terms rather than in terms of effectiveness.
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Seeking positive experiences can produce illusory correlations
Jerker Denrell & Gaël Le Mens
Cognition, June 2011, Pages 313-324
Abstract:
Individuals tend to select again alternatives about which they have positive impressions and to avoid alternatives about which they have negative impressions. Here we show how this sequential sampling feature of the information acquisition process leads to the emergence of an illusory correlation between estimates of the attributes of multi-attribute alternatives. The sign of the illusory correlation depends on how the decision maker combines estimates in making her sampling decisions. A positive illusory correlation emerges when evaluations are compensatory or disjunctive and a negative illusory correlation can emerge when evaluations are conjunctive. Our theory provides an alternative explanation for illusory correlations that does not rely on biased information processing nor selective attention to different pieces of information. It provides a new perspective on several well-established empirical phenomena such as the ‘Halo' effect in personality perception, the relation between proximity and attitudes, and the in-group out-group bias in stereotype formation.
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Chris Loersch, Michael McCaslin & Richard Petty
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Some recent research applying dual-systems logic suggests that different attitude measures reflect independent modes of evaluation with explicit measures primarily affected by deliberative processes and implicit measures primarily affected by automatic processes. In the current work we hypothesized that explicit attitude measures often do not reflect the outcome of automatic or associative processing because social judgeability concerns prevent people from reporting consciously inexplicable "gut feelings" towards the attitude object. To explore this possibility, we simultaneously presented participants with associative and deliberative information about a target person and manipulated their sensitivity to social judgeability concerns with different sets of task instructions. Although an explicit attitude measure was unaffected by subliminally-presented associative information following a standard instruction set, this content did impact explicit judgments when social judgeability concerns were assuaged with a "go with your gut" instruction set.
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A Comparison of Adult Witnesses' Suggestibility Across Various Types of Leading Questions
Stefanie Sharman & Martine Powell
Applied Cognitive Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current study directly compared witnesses' susceptibility to suggestion across various structures of misleading interview questions. We examined four question structures that varied on numerous dimensions; whether they narrowed the response option to yes or no, whether they included highly specific detail about the witnessed event and whether they presumed the information being suggested to be true. Susceptibility to misinformation was measured by witnesses' responses to the initial interview questions and their responses to subsequent recognition questions. Interview questions that narrowed the response option and contained specific details and questions that encouraged broader responses but presumed certain information were found to be the most harmful. Participants were more likely to agree with the misleading suggestions contained in these question structures-and more likely to falsely report those suggested details at subsequent interview-than misleading suggestions contained in other question structures. The implications are discussed.
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Liane Young & Jonathan Phillips
Cognition, May 2011, Pages 166-178
Abstract:
When we evaluate moral agents, we consider many factors, including whether the agent acted freely, or under duress or coercion. In turn, moral evaluations have been shown to influence our (non-moral) evaluations of these same factors. For example, when we judge an agent to have acted immorally, we are subsequently more likely to judge the agent to have acted freely, not under force. Here, we investigate the cognitive signatures of this effect in interpersonal situations, in which one agent ("forcer") forces another agent ("forcee") to act either immorally or morally. The structure of this relationship allowed us to ask questions about both the "forcer" and the "forcee." Paradoxically, participants judged that the "forcer" forced the "forcee" to act immorally (i.e. X forced Y), but that the "forcee" was not forced to act immorally (i.e. Y was not forced by X). This pattern obtained only for human agents who acted intentionally. Directly changing participants' focus from one agent to another (forcer versus forcee) also changed the target of moral evaluation and therefore force attributions. The full pattern of judgments may provide a window into motivated moral reasoning and focusing bias more generally; participants may have been motivated to attribute greater force to the immoral forcer and greater freedom to the immoral forcee.
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Town vs. gown: A direct comparison of community residents and student mock jurors
Harmon Hosch et al.
Behavioral Sciences & the Law, forthcoming
Abstract:
The use of students as mock jurors in the majority of legal psychology studies on jury behavior has been criticized (e.g., Bray & Kerr, 1979; Diamond, 1997). This study examined the degree to which student mock jurors' decisions were generalizable to those of real jurors. The participants of the study included 297 jury-eligible university students and 297 volunteers from the venire in the same community as that in which the students resided. All participants viewed one of six versions of a videotaped criminal trial. The defendant testified in English or in Spanish. In addition, the race of defendant was varied. Three bilingual individuals served as defendants with one appearing to be of northern European origin, one of Latino background, and one of African origin. Dependent variables included verdict and, for those who found the defendant guilty, the number of years to which he should be sentenced, and whether he should be fined. Student mock jurors differed reliably from their community counterparts on several demographic characteristics. However, the two groups had mixed results in relation to decision-making tasks. There was no difference in individual verdict preferences, but the students' sentence recommendations were more punitive. These results are interpreted in the context of the generalizability of mock juror studies.