Anchoring effect in legal decision-making: A meta-analysis.

Bystranowski, Piotr; Janik, Bartosz; Próchnicki, Maciej; Skórska, Paulina

doi:10.1037/lhb0000438

Cited by 43 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 100 publications

(174 reference statements)

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“…In particular, numerous studies have investigated the impact of anchoring effects on judicial decisions (see Bystranowski et al, 2021 , for a recent meta-analysis). Judges and jurors are often required to translate qualitative judgments into quantitative decisions ( Hans and Reyna, 2011 ; Rachlinski et al, 2015 ).…”

Section: Justicementioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Cognitive Biases on Professionals’ Decision-Making: A Review of Four Occupational Areas

Berthet

2022

Front. Psychol.

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The author reviewed the research on the impact of cognitive biases on professionals’ decision-making in four occupational areas (management, finance, medicine, and law). Two main findings emerged. First, the literature reviewed shows that a dozen of cognitive biases has an impact on professionals’ decisions in these four areas, overconfidence being the most recurrent bias. Second, the level of evidence supporting the claim that cognitive biases impact professional decision-making differs across the areas covered. Research in finance relied primarily upon secondary data while research in medicine and law relied mainly upon primary data from vignette studies (both levels of evidence are found in management). Two research gaps are highlighted. The first one is a potential lack of ecological validity of the findings from vignette studies, which are numerous. The second is the neglect of individual differences in cognitive biases, which might lead to the false idea that all professionals are susceptible to biases, to the same extent. To address that issue, we suggest that reliable, specific measures of cognitive biases need to be improved or developed.

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Section: Justicementioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Cognitive Biases on Professionals’ Decision-Making: A Review of Four Occupational Areas

Berthet

2022

Front. Psychol.

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“…For example, Tversky and Kahneman (1974) introduced and empirically tested the anchoring bias (i.e., the tendency to rely too heavily on initial information or salient numbers present in a decision context when making judgments) and the availability bias (i.e., the tendency to overestimate the probability of an event if examples of the event can easily be brought to mind). A recent meta-analysis found evidence of the effect of anchoring bias in legal decision-making, such as decisions made by judges and juries regarding damages awarded in civil cases and the length of prison terms in criminal cases (Bystranowski et al, 2021).…”

Section: What Is Cognitive Bias?mentioning

confidence: 99%

A general model of cognitive bias in human judgment and systematic review specific to forensic mental health.

Neal¹,

Lienert²,

Denne³

et al. 2022

Law and Human Behavior

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Objective. Cognitive biases can impact experts' judgments and decisions. We offer a broad descriptive model of how bias affects human judgment. Although studies have explored the role of cognitive biases and debiasing techniques in forensic mental health, we conducted the first systematic review to identify, evaluate, and summarize the findings. Hypotheses. Given the exploratory nature of this review, we did not test formal hypotheses. General research questions included the proportion of studies focusing on cognitive biases and/or debiasing, the research methods applied, the cognitive biases and debiasing strategies empirically studied in the forensic context, their effects on forensic mental health decisions, and effect sizes. Method. A systematic search of PsycINFO and Google Scholar resulted in 22 records comprising 23 studies in the United States, Canada, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. We extracted data on participants, context, methods, and results. Results. Most studies focused only on cognitive biases (k = 16, 69.6%), with fewer investigating ways to address them (k = 7, 30.4%). Of the 17 studies that tested for biases, 10 found significant effects (58.8%), four found partial effects (23.5%), and three found no effects (17.6%). Foci included general perceptions of biases; adversarial allegiance; bias blind spot; hindsight and confirmation biases; moral disengagement; primacy and recency effects; interview suggestibility; and cross-cultural, racial, and gender biases. Of the seven debiasing-related studies, nearly all (k = 6) focused at least in part on the general perception of debiasing strategies, with three testing for specific effects (i.e., cognitive bias training, consider-the-opposite, and introspection caution), two of which yielded significant effects. Conclusions. Considerable clinical and methodological heterogeneity limited quantitative comparability. Future research could build on the existing literature to develop or adapt effective debiasing strategies in collaboration with practitioners to improve the quality of forensic mental health decisions. Public Significance StatementEvidence of bias in forensic mental health emerged in ways consistent with what we know about human judgment broadly. We know less about how to debias judgments-an important frontier for future research. Better understanding how bias works and developing effective debiasing strategies tailored to the forensic mental health context hold promise for improving quality. Until then, we can use what we know now to limit bias in our work.

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“…For example, the numbers that are presented as anchors are sometimes based on pretests that did not involve anchors (e.g., 15 th and 85 th percentiles; Jacowitz & Kahneman, 1995, p. 1162, they may be based on the true value (e.g., true value ± x or true value × x ±1 ; Röseler, Schütz, Dolling, et al, 2020), or they may have been chosen unsystematically (e.g., two random numbers below and above the true value; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). However, the choice of anchors has been found to determine effect sizes (e.g., Chapman & Johnson, 1994), and some authors have even suggested that there might be an inverse u-shaped relationship between anchor extremeness and effect sizes, that is, if anchors are too high or too low, their influence might decrease (Bystranowski et al, 2021). Most theories do not yet include paradigm features.…”

Section: Heterogeneity With Uncertain Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thorsteinson (2011) found nonlinearity, but it was confounded with plausibility. Finally, metaanalyses (Bystranowski et al, 2021;Townson, 2019) have suggested that there may even be an inverted u-shaped relationship.…”

Section: Contradictory Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hanging the Anchor Off a New Ship: A Meta-Analysis of Anchoring Effects

Röseler¹,

Schütz²

2022

Preprint

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Anchoring effects are among the largest and easiest to replicate in social psychology. However, the ship on which anchoring research is floating has become brittle with respect to three domains: (a) the relationship between paradigm features (e.g., choice of anchor or type of scale) and effect sizes is mostly unknown, (b) there are numerous contradictory findings on moderators (e.g., role of incentives for accurate estimates), and (c) it is unclear which of the many theories on anchoring effects is best supported by the evidence overall. Method: To increase clarity and transparency in the field of anchoring effects research, we meta-analyzed the most comprehensive collection of openly available anchoring effects data in existence today. Results: We found large but also heterogeneous anchoring effects, g = 0.689, 95% CI [0.589, 0.789], σ² = 0.21, Ntotal = 17,708, k = 393. (a) Anchors communicated as randomly determined did not have effects, and some effects reversed when visual response scales were used. (b) For many previously contradictory results, we found null effects (e.g., incentives did not affect the magnitude of anchoring effects). (c) Overall, theories of anchoring that stress rationality and nonlinearity were best supported by the results. Discussion: By applying an open and robust empirical procedure, we provide anchoring researchers with a new ship. We recommend that future research increase trust in findings through preregistration, reduce heterogeneity between anchoring effects through standardization, and better explain the impact of moderators. Data and analyses are available online (https://osf.io/4t5mu/).

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Anchoring effect in legal decision-making: A meta-analysis.

Cited by 43 publications

References 100 publications

The Impact of Cognitive Biases on Professionals’ Decision-Making: A Review of Four Occupational Areas

The Impact of Cognitive Biases on Professionals’ Decision-Making: A Review of Four Occupational Areas

A general model of cognitive bias in human judgment and systematic review specific to forensic mental health.

Hanging the Anchor Off a New Ship: A Meta-Analysis of Anchoring Effects

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