THE STAKES MATTER: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE OF HYPOTHETICAL BIAS IN CASE EVALUATION AND THE CURATIVE POWER OF ECONOMIC INCENTIVES

Jury research plays a critical role in the modern legal environment. A growing number of courts employ a technique known as a summary jury trial that makes use of a surrogate jury to provide information on the relative strength of each party's case in order to motivate settlement. This paper pr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:St. John's law review 2006-10, Vol.80 (4), p.1275
Main Authors: Cahoy, Daniel R, Ding, Min
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bias
Decision making
Incentives
Judicial reviews
Juries
Polls & surveys
Realism
Simulation
Social sciences
Studies
Trials
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Summary:Jury research plays a critical role in the modern legal environment. A growing number of courts employ a technique known as a summary jury trial that makes use of a surrogate jury to provide information on the relative strength of each party's case in order to motivate settlement. This paper proposes a remedy for the problem of hypothetical bias in jury studies that is translatable to existing modalities. Whenever an individual is called upon to essentially predict what he or she would do in a given circumstance, there is a potential for hypothetical bias. To correct for the hypothetical bias, it is important that an incentive-aligned mechanism be implemented to give a mock juror additional utility that is consistent with that which would exist for a real jury. The economic behavior of participants in studies intended to simulate contexts wherein a person other than the participant is affected by the outcome is a relatively unexplored field.
ISSN:0036-2905
2168-8796