Cognitions, Attitudes and Decision‐Making in Search and Seizure Cases 1

Abstract

This study investigated decision‐making in a search and seizure context. Specifically, the study examined the viability of a tort remedy for deterring police from illegal searches. The decision is made in a context common in legal settings: the decision‐maker is supposed to ignore available information (in this case, knowledge about the outcome of the search). This type of judgment allows for the operation of many cognitive influences, such as a hindsight bias‐like process and the influence of attitudes and cognitive schemas. A search scenario was presented to 377 subjects; each scenario had one of three different endings—drugs were found (guilty), no evidence was found (not guilty), or no mention was made of the outcome (neutral). The results showed that knowledge of the outcome of the search influenced damage judgements, such that a guilty outcome led to lower damage awards. Outcome knowledge also influenced reconstruction of the events in the scenario, such that a guilty outcome led to a distortion of information in the direction of incriminating the defendant. The results also showed that well‐organized and coherent ideological belief systems exert an independent influence on both awards and reconstruction of events.