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8 - The Psychology of the Trial Judge

from II - Ontology and Epistemology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2021

By
Morris B. Hoffman
Edited by
Bartosz Brożek ,
Jaap Hage  and
Nicole Vincent
Bartosz Brożek
Affiliation:
Jagiellonian University, Krakow
Jaap Hage
Affiliation:
Universiteit Maastricht, Netherlands
Nicole Vincent
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Sydney
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Summary

The chapter on the psychology of the trial consists of three sections. The first section examines the question of whether the general insights of psychology and behavioral economics can be applied to trial judges, or whether, by virtue of their special training and experience or some other reason, trial judges are different. The second section surveys the relatively scant behavioral literature on judging and places it in the larger context of non-judge decision making. It does so by considering four well-studied “heuristics,” or cognitive shortcuts that allow people to make quick, intuitive decisions with little or no deliberation, but that can sometimes also result in errors in reasoning. The four heuristics considered are: anchoring, hindsight, compromise and contrast, and representativeness. The third section finishes the chapter with a series of reflections about specific challenges the author has thought about over the twenty-nine years that he has been a trial judge, coupled with a few suggestions about how the system might better accommodate some of those challenges.

Type
Chapter
Information
Law and Mind
A Survey of Law and the Cognitive Sciences
 , pp. 165 - 192
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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