Quasirational models of sentencing.

Dhami, Mandeep K.; Belton, Ian; Goodman‐Delahunty, Jane

doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2014.07.009

Cited by 19 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…First, sentencers, like all people, simply lack the cognitive capacity, in terms of attention, memory, and information processing, to analyze complex problems in a fully deliberative way. Second, the complexity of the sentencing task in terms of, for example, multiple (sometimes conflicting) factors, ill‐defined laws, and competing sentencing goals impedes deliberative thinking (see also Dhami et al ; Hammond ). The unaided mind attempting to solve a complex task such as sentencing will find it difficult to attend to, weight, and integrate all the potentially relevant information in a case.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We describe the relevant features of these two sentencing systems at appropriate points below (for other information on these two systems, see Ashworth & Roberts ; Edney & Bagaric ; see also Dhami et al ). Replication across time within a jurisdiction and generalizability across jurisdictions can serve to reduce the potential for our findings being explained by legal factors such as sentencing laws and/or their interpretation by sentencers, and instead increase support for the idea that even a complex sociolegal function such as criminal punishment is ultimately bound by simple psychological heuristics.…”

Section: The Present Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, judicial discretion is considered essential for producing individualized justice, and jurisdictions differ in how much discretion is afforded to sentencers. In some jurisdictions, such as in the United States, sentencers are expected to follow highly structured, numerical, grid‐based guidelines that specify the factors that should determine a sentence (e.g., offense seriousness and criminal history) and constrain the sentences that are meted out (see Dhami et al ). Other jurisdictions, such as England and Wales, have opted for more flexible, text‐based guidance that leave room for the exercise of discretion in an apparent effort to enable individualized justice (Gage ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Criminal Sentencing by Preferred Numbers

Dhami¹,

Belton²,

Merrall³

et al. 2020

J Empirical Legal Studies

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Criminal sentencing is a complex cognitive activity often performed by the unaided mind under suboptimal conditions. As such, sentencers may not behave according to policy, guidelines, or training. We analyzed the distribution of sentences meted out in one year in two different jurisdictions (i.e., England and Wales, and New South Wales, Australia). We reveal that sentencers prefer certain numbers when meting out sentence lengths (in custody and community service) and amounts (for fines/compensation). These “common doses” accounted for over 90 percent of sentences in each jurisdiction. The size of these doses increased as sentences became more severe, and doses followed a logarithmic pattern. Our findings are compatible with psychological research on preferred numbers and are reminiscent of Weber's and Fechner's laws. The findings run contrary to arguments against efforts to reduce judicial discretion, and potentially undermine the notion of individualized justice, as well as raise questions about the (cost) effectiveness of sentencing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Present Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Criminal Sentencing by Preferred Numbers

Dhami¹,

Belton²,

Merrall³

et al. 2020

J Empirical Legal Studies

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“…In addition, the structure and demands of the decision task such as amount of information available and its redundancy, information presentation format and order, number of response options, and time pressure also influence how decisions are made. According to Hammond's (1996Hammond's ( , 2000 cognitive continuum theory, some of these task properties may lead people to abandon analytic thought and move to quasi-rational or intuitive cognition (see Dhami & Thomson, 2012; see also Dhami, Belton, & Goodman-Delahunty, 2015). Empirical evidence supports these claims (e.g., Dunwoody, Haarbauer, Mahan, Marino, & Tang, 2000;Hamm, 1988;Hammond et al, 1987).…”

Section: Analyze Individual Judges' Decision Data Using Psychologicalmentioning

confidence: 99%

On getting inside the judge’s mind.

Dhami¹,

Belton²

2017

Translational Issues in Psychological Science

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According to the scales of justice, the judge, in an unbiased way and directed by law, attends to all of the available information in a case, weighs it according to its significance, and integrates it to make a decision. By contrast, research suggests that judicial decision-making departs from the cognitive balancing act depicted by the scales of justice. Nevertheless, the research is often dismissed as irrelevant, and the judiciary, legal policymakers and the public remain largely unconvinced that the status quo needs improving. One potential rebuttal to the scientific findings is that they lack validity because researchers did not study judges making decisions on real cases. Another potential argument is that researchers have not pinpointed the psychological processes of any specific judge because they analyzed data over judges and/or used statistical models lacking in psychological plausibility. We review these 2 grounds for appeal against the scientific research on judicial decision-making, and note that it appears researchers' choices of data collection methods and analytic techniques may, indeed, be inappropriate for understanding the phenomena. We offer 2 remedies from the sphere of decision-making research: collecting data on judicial decision-making using representative design, and analyzing judicial decision data using more psychologically plausible models. Used together, we believe these solutions can help researchers better understand and improve legal decision-making. What is the significance of this article for the general public?We propose that researchers studying judicial decision-making ought to examine decisions made on real(istic) cases using a representative experimental design, and they should analyze individual judge or bench decision data using psychologically plausible models. This will make the research more relevant to the judiciary and thus make it more difficult for judges and legal policy-makers to ignore the findings.

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“…Similarly, research on naturalistic decision making (e.g., Klein, Orasanu, Calderwood, & Zsambok, 1993) stresses the clever nature of intuitive decision making processes. On the other hand, the heuristics-and-biases research program (e.g., Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982) and associated work on System-1/System-2 dichotomies highlighted the superiority of analytic, happens when individuals detect that intuitive processes produce outcomes that violate normative standards (see also Dhami, Belton, & Goodman-Delahunty, 2015).…”

Section: Intuition Reflected In Clashes and Conflicts Kurtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling and aiding intuition: Introduction to the commentary section.

Marewski¹,

Hoffrage²,

Fisher³

2016

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

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This section of JARMAC includes a series of commentaries on articles published in the September, 2015, special issue of JARMAC: "Modeling and aiding intuition in organizational decision making" . The commentaries focus on research programs such as naturalistic decision making, heuristics-and-biases, ACT-R, and CLARION. They feature topics ranging from evolution to decision styles. In this introduction, we provide a brief overview of those contributions, alongside with concluding words on this project of pulling together multiple and very different strands on intuition.Not too long ago, one of us stood, in the evening twilight, on top of a hill, letting his gaze wander across a valley. On the other side of the valley, the eye met distant trees, and then, all of a sudden, partly veiled by branches and wagering fog: a fallen column, remnants of an amphitheatre, and a small, round temple. These ruins were not built by ancient Rome's architects, as one might suspect, but crafted during the Enlightenment. The ruins' hidden, foggy romance contrasts with the aesthetics of a beautiful palace, built on the very same hill from which this scene unfolds. This palace is intact, characterized by ordered shapes, colonnades, and statues. It sits on top of that hill like a jewellery-braced crown, with majestic stairs reaching down and widening into an open park landscapethat of Sanssouci, Potsdam, Germany.The dialectics of these two polesthe ruins in the distance, dreamt-up re-creations of a once powerful empire, and the seemingly more modern palace with its intact golden lines, clear structure, and order on the hillis akin to the contrast that forms the central theme of this special issue and its commentaries: The savage, almost ancestral mysticism of intuition, gut feelings, and subjective hunches on the one hand, and the majestic, enlightened garments of reason, rationality, and careful analysis on the other hand.

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Quasirational models of sentencing.

Cited by 19 publications

References 72 publications

Criminal Sentencing by Preferred Numbers

Criminal Sentencing by Preferred Numbers

On getting inside the judge’s mind.

Modeling and aiding intuition: Introduction to the commentary section.

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