Comment by bumby
2 years ago
Yes, in the words of the linked paper it injects exogenous decision making. In other words, the decision is based on more than just the judge so we can’t conclude the discrepancy is due to the judge’s personal bias.
2 years ago
Yes, in the words of the linked paper it injects exogenous decision making. In other words, the decision is based on more than just the judge so we can’t conclude the discrepancy is due to the judge’s personal bias.
Yeah thats the original point but I think he means aside from that, the order itself also drops a suggestion to the judge as to the nature of the case before hearing it.
The order itself might be injecting a subconscious bias to the judge.
I think maybe the judges can tell how important cases are based on the charges. I don't think the implication is that someone is somehow reviewing the case prior to it being heard and using some judgement based on some (likely unknown as it has not yet been presented) evidence to order them, but that charges that carry less penalty or that are are already classified as lesser (i.e. misdemeanor compared to felony) are sorted prior to ones that are not.
I don't think the people sorting the cases (which could be the judges themselves) have any additional information that the judge doesn't readily have available, so I'm not sure there's much room for bias of a substantial nature.
That’s good point. The authors of the original papers the “hungry judge” idea also did work on what they call “priming” which would include what you suggest. I don’t know if that has been replicated though.
This is not an example of the priming effect, which describes how one stimulus affects the reaction to a different stimulus, but is simply an example of suggestion for a common stimulus. The priming effect itself has come under fire in recent years for failure to replicate.
Examples of priming include what was studied in the Priming Intelligence study, which primed groups of participants with the idea of either professors or the idea of hooligans, then tested how they performed on an intelligence test. It purported to discover that those primed with the idea of professors performed better. This is an example of a widely discussed priming study that has failed replication.
It's not as if the judge does not have all the details of the case prior to sentencing. The order can't possibly supply more information than the fact that he just sat through the trial himself days or weeks prior. At least in the United States, the same judge who presides over a trial is the one who sentences the convicted. The only time a defendant gets different judges for anything is early in the process, like during arraignment.
Knowing the details and being subconsciously influenced are different questions. Ambient music in stores doesn’t change the prices, products, or a shoppers needs yet it still influences buying behavior.
Suppose a taste tester is asked to rank something on a scale of 1-100, but before giving a number they need to presort them into terrible, ok, good, great then go back to each group and give a specific score to each item. My guess is there would be different clustering vs someone doing the same task in one go.
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The study involved parole boards, not initial sentencing from an initial trial.
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