Explicit and implicit markers of fairness preeminence in criminal judges

Abstract

Achieving justice could be considered a complex social decision-making scenario. Despite the relevance of social decisions for legal contexts, these processes have still not been explored for individuals who work as criminal judges dispensing justice. To bridge the gap, we used a complex social decision-making task (Ultimatum game) and tracked a heart rate variability measurement: the square root of the mean squared differences of successive NN intervals (RMSSD) at their baseline (as an implicit measurement that tracks emotion regulation behavior) for criminal judges (n = 24) and a control group (n = 27). Our results revealed that, compared to controls, judges were slower and rejected a bigger proportion of unfair offers. Moreover, the rate of rejections and the reaction times were predicted by higher RMSSD scores for the judges. This study provides evidence about the impact of legal background and expertise in complex social decision-making. Our results contribute to understanding how expertise can shape criminal judges’ social behaviors and pave the way for promising new research into the cognitive and physiological factors associated with social decision-making.

Another in need enhances prosociality and modulates frontal theta oscillations in young adults

“…Subjects across both groups tended to be less prosocial when personal costs were associated with the prosocial choice. This is in line with previous evidence showing lower rates of prosocial decisions in the dictator game (DG) than in the ultimatum game (UG) ( 71 – 73 ). While in the former game, there are no monetary incentives for prosociality, in the latter game, subjects need to consider others’ earnings to obtain higher outcomes.…”

“…Recently, fairness-related normative decision-making in social interaction has been analyzed from the perspective of two complementary processes: an intuitive component and a deliberative one ( 76 ). The intuitive component is related to the responses to conflicts between self-interests and a given social context; it is usually related to emotional factors and is reported as the responsible component for altruistic punishment and general prosocial responses ( 73 , 77 – 82 ). The deliberative component has been related to a reappraisal process of conflict evaluation between, for instance, unfairness-evoked aversive responses (norm enforcement) and self-interest concerns ( 76 ).…”