Legally Irrelevant Factors in Judicial Decision-Making: Battle Deaths and the Imposition of the Death Penalty in Nazi Germany

Geerling, Wayne; Magee, Gary Β.; Raschky, Paul A.; Smyth, Russell

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2924300

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Other factors, like negative pre-trial publicity (Steblay et al, 1999, or stereotypical beliefs about rape victims, for example, also influence decisions in case simulations (Ellison and Munro, 2008). In addition, a large study on the death penalty in Nazi Germany showed that the death penalty was more likely to be given during times when Nazi Germany suffered large numbers of battle deaths (Geerling et al, 2017). Taken together, this body of literature suggests that the assignment of guilt is often influenced by irrelevant factors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does It Matter Whether You or Your Brain Did It? An Empirical Investigation of the Influence of the Double Subject Fallacy on Moral Responsibility Judgments

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite progress in cognitive neuroscience, we are still far from understanding the relations between the brain and the conscious self. We previously suggested that some neuroscientific texts that attempt to clarify these relations may in fact make them more difficult to understand. Such texts—ranging from popular science to high-impact scientific publications—position the brain and the conscious self as two independent, interacting subjects, capable of possessing opposite psychological states. We termed such writing ‘Double Subject Fallacy’ (DSF). We further suggested that such DSF language, besides being conceptually confusing and reflecting dualistic intuitions, might affect people’s conceptions of moral responsibility, lessening the perception of guilt over actions. Here, we empirically investigated this proposition with a series of three experiments (pilot and two preregistered replications). Subjects were presented with moral scenarios where the defendant was either (1) clearly guilty, (2) ambiguous, or (3) clearly innocent while the accompanying neuroscientific evidence about the defendant was presented using DSF or non-DSF language. Subjects were instructed to rate the defendant’s guilt in all experiments. Subjects rated the defendant in the clearly guilty scenario as guiltier than in the two other scenarios and the defendant in the ambiguously described scenario as guiltier than in the innocent scenario, as expected. In Experiment 1 ( N = 609), an effect was further found for DSF language in the expected direction: subjects rated the defendant less guilty when the neuroscientific evidence was described using DSF language, across all levels of culpability. However, this effect did not replicate in Experiment 2 ( N = 1794), which focused on different moral scenario, nor in Experiment 3 ( N = 1810), which was an exact replication of Experiment 1. Bayesian analyses yielded strong evidence against the existence of an effect of DSF language on the perception of guilt. Our results thus challenge the claim that DSF language affects subjects’ moral judgments. They further demonstrate the importance of good scientific practice, including preregistration and—most critically—replication, to avoid reaching erroneous conclusions based on false-positive results.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does It Matter Whether You or Your Brain Did It? An Empirical Investigation of the Influence of the Double Subject Fallacy on Moral Responsibility Judgments

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Crimes and Punishments

Geerling

Magee

2017

Quantifying Resistance

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Judicial breakfast as an external factor in judicial decision making in courts

2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The objective of this article is to establish whether the judges depend on relevant facts, judicial rules, and the law when making their judgments or they use extraneous factors such as what a judge eats, personal ideology, beliefs, or the cultural and political environment. The discourse between the two sides is incomplete without exploring the grand theories: formalism and realism. The antimony between the two theories resulted in theoretical analysis and empirical research. The realism challenged the existing logical reasoning and legal rules that judges use in making their judgment as they contend that judges applying rules and law in their decision-making process are irrational and mechanical. Formalism insists on using the judicial rules and the law in making decisions as opposed to extraneous factors, which realists contend should be the basis for decision making with laws and rules only to support the findings. The continental legal theory holds that legal realism is a hard-nosed, down-to-earth, and practical school of thought that is opposed to mechanical and scientific theories. The scholarly analysis of the judicial decision-making process brings into focus the conduct of judicial officers and whether they base their reasoning on extrajudicial issues. However, the discussion should avoid denigrating into an attack on the personality of judges as it undermines the rule of law.

show abstract

Legally Irrelevant Factors in Judicial Decision-Making: Battle Deaths and the Imposition of the Death Penalty in Nazi Germany

Cited by 3 publications

References 30 publications

Does It Matter Whether You or Your Brain Did It? An Empirical Investigation of the Influence of the Double Subject Fallacy on Moral Responsibility Judgments

Does It Matter Whether You or Your Brain Did It? An Empirical Investigation of the Influence of the Double Subject Fallacy on Moral Responsibility Judgments

Crimes and Punishments

Judicial breakfast as an external factor in judicial decision making in courts

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About