Feeling risky, might detain later: The impact of emotional information on risk assessment in remand proceedings.
(2021) KOGM20 20211Cognitive Science
- Abstract
- A fair judicial system assumes that judgments and decisions are made based on quality of evidence rather than extraneous factors. The evidence in criminal cases usually carries emotional content. Previous research shows that lay-people, such as juries, can be affected by emotional content when making legal decisions. However, judges who finalize verdicts have extensive legal education. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether legal education can mediate or eliminate the effect of emotional content when making legal judgments. The focus of this study is the remand hearing (“häktningsförhandling”), which is dependent on three risk judgments (risk of recidivism, risk of collusion and risk of flight). For this study a survey was... (More)
- A fair judicial system assumes that judgments and decisions are made based on quality of evidence rather than extraneous factors. The evidence in criminal cases usually carries emotional content. Previous research shows that lay-people, such as juries, can be affected by emotional content when making legal decisions. However, judges who finalize verdicts have extensive legal education. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether legal education can mediate or eliminate the effect of emotional content when making legal judgments. The focus of this study is the remand hearing (“häktningsförhandling”), which is dependent on three risk judgments (risk of recidivism, risk of collusion and risk of flight). For this study a survey was used containing realistic remand hearing descriptions with emotional content, both legally relevant and irrelevant. 27 participants with a Swedish legal education (law degree or advanced law student) read the case descriptions and made judgments on the risks associated with a remand hearing. The participants later recalled the initial case description and made a second judgment in the same case, based on memory. As a measure of emotional impact on reasoning, emotional words in the participants’ recall were identified by two independent raters. Further, an independent sample of 16 students rated the valence of the identified emotional words. Proportion of emotional words and perceived valence was then used in a linear regression model as predictors of risk judgment. Results indicate that proportion of emotional words and the negative valence of emotional words could weakly predict higher judgments of some of the risks associated with detaining a suspect. These results indicate that a legal education alone is not enough to fully protect a judicial decision maker from the impact of emotional content. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9059573
- author
- Lindberg, August LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- KOGM20 20211
- year
- 2021
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Emotions, Law, Judgement, Risk assessment, Fuzzy-trace theory, Legal decision making, remand hearing
- language
- English
- id
- 9059573
- date added to LUP
- 2021-07-06 10:23:08
- date last changed
- 2021-07-06 10:23:08
@misc{9059573,
abstract = {{A fair judicial system assumes that judgments and decisions are made based on quality of evidence rather than extraneous factors. The evidence in criminal cases usually carries emotional content. Previous research shows that lay-people, such as juries, can be affected by emotional content when making legal decisions. However, judges who finalize verdicts have extensive legal education. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether legal education can mediate or eliminate the effect of emotional content when making legal judgments. The focus of this study is the remand hearing (“häktningsförhandling”), which is dependent on three risk judgments (risk of recidivism, risk of collusion and risk of flight). For this study a survey was used containing realistic remand hearing descriptions with emotional content, both legally relevant and irrelevant. 27 participants with a Swedish legal education (law degree or advanced law student) read the case descriptions and made judgments on the risks associated with a remand hearing. The participants later recalled the initial case description and made a second judgment in the same case, based on memory. As a measure of emotional impact on reasoning, emotional words in the participants’ recall were identified by two independent raters. Further, an independent sample of 16 students rated the valence of the identified emotional words. Proportion of emotional words and perceived valence was then used in a linear regression model as predictors of risk judgment. Results indicate that proportion of emotional words and the negative valence of emotional words could weakly predict higher judgments of some of the risks associated with detaining a suspect. These results indicate that a legal education alone is not enough to fully protect a judicial decision maker from the impact of emotional content.}},
author = {{Lindberg, August}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Feeling risky, might detain later: The impact of emotional information on risk assessment in remand proceedings.}},
year = {{2021}},
}