Identifying Judicial Empathy: Does Having Daughters Cause Judges to Rule for Women's Issues?

Glynn, Adam; Sen, Maya

doi:10.1111/ajps.12118

Cited by 143 publications

(99 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Together with past studies illustrating the effects of judge's ideology (Epstein, Parker & Segal, 2013;Miles & Sunstein, 2008) and personal experience (Glynn & Sen, 2015) on their professional decisions, our current findings cast doubt on strictly formalist models of judicial reasoning and call for a detailed grasp of the psychology behind the interpretation and application of legal norms.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 48%

Gender stereotypes underlie child custody decisions

Costa

Esteves

Kreimer

et al. 2018

Euro J Social Psych

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Using hypothetical divorce cases we examine the role of gender stereotypes in decisions about child custody. Good mothers received greater custody allocations than did good fathers across a tightly matched pair of vignettes in three culturally distinct samples: Argentina, Brazil, and the United States (Study 1). Two follow‐up studies indicated that the warmth dimension of stereotype content partly accounted for the asymmetry in custody awards: The proportion of maternal‐primary custody was predicted by the tendency to ascribe warmth‐related traits—such as friendliness, generosity, or trustworthiness—to mothers (Study 2) and associate them with female over male nouns (Study 3). We also found that endorsing shared custody mitigated the asymmetry in custody awards documented in our studies. Together, these results highlight the interplay of stereotyped attitudes and egalitarian commitments in the context of judicial decisions about child custody.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 48%

Gender stereotypes underlie child custody decisions

Costa

Esteves

Kreimer

et al. 2018

Euro J Social Psych

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show abstract

“…The study found that in gender-related cases (such as sexual harassment), a federal judge with one or more daughters is 7% more likely to vote in favor of the female plaintiff compared with a judge with no daughters (Glynn & Sen 2015). In cases not involving gender-related issues, however, judges with daughters do not differ from their counterparts who have either no children or only male children.…”

Section: Gendermentioning

confidence: 95%

Judging the Judiciary by the Numbers: Empirical Research on Judges

Rachlinski

Wistrich

2017

Annu. Rev. Law. Soc. Sci.

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 AbstractDo judges make decisions that are truly impartial? A wide range of experimental and field studies reveal that several extra-legal factors influence judicial decision making. Demographic characteristics of judges and litigants affect judges' decisions. Judges also rely heavily on intuitive reasoning in deciding cases, making them vulnerable to the use of mental shortcuts that can lead to mistakes. Furthermore, judges sometimes rely on facts outside the record and rule more favorably towards litigants who are more sympathetic or with whom they share demographic characteristics. On the whole, judges are excellent decision makers, and sometimes resist common errors of judgment that influence ordinary adults. The weight of the evidence, however, suggests that judges are vulnerable to systematic deviations from the ideal of judicial impartiality.

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“…Research on the US Congress shows that having daughters increases both congressmen's and congresswomen's propensity to vote liberally on reproductive rights (Washington ), which indicates that congressmen consider their daughters’ experiences and perspectives, and as a consequence become more committed to women's issues. Additionally, Adam Glynn and Maya Sen () find that US Courts of Appeals judges who have daughters vote in a more feminist fashion on gender issues than judges who have only sons (though see Healy and Malhotra , who show that having sisters make brothers more conservative on gender issues). The results seem to be driven mainly by male judges.…”

Section: Why Social Relationships May Function As a Complement To Desmentioning

confidence: 99%

That's what friends are for: how intergroup friendships promote historically disadvantaged groups’ substantive political representation

Kokkonen

Karlsson

2017

British Journal of Sociology

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The interests of historically disadvantaged groups risk being overlooked if they are not present in the decision-making process. However, a mere presence in politics does not guarantee political success. Often groups need allies to promote their interests successfully. We argue that one way to identify such allies is to judge politicians by whether they have friends in historically disadvantaged groups, as intergroup friendships have been shown to make people understand and feel empathy for outgroups. In other words, intergroup friendships may function as an important complement to descriptive representation. We test our argument with a unique survey that asks all elected political representatives in Sweden's 290 municipalities (response rate 79 per cent) about their friendship ties to, and their representation of, five historically disadvantaged groups: women, immigrants, youths, pensioners and blue-collar workers. We find a strong correlation between representatives' friendship ties to these groups and their commitment to represent them. The correlation is especially strong for youths and blue-collar workers, which likely can be explained by the fact that these groups usually lack crucial political resources (such as experience and education). We conclude that friendship ties function as an important complement to descriptive representation for achieving substantive representation.

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Identifying Judicial Empathy: Does Having Daughters Cause Judges to Rule for Women's Issues?

Cited by 143 publications

References 41 publications

Gender stereotypes underlie child custody decisions

Gender stereotypes underlie child custody decisions

Judging the Judiciary by the Numbers: Empirical Research on Judges

That's what friends are for: how intergroup friendships promote historically disadvantaged groups’ substantive political representation

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