Abstract
Historically, people have often expressed negative feelings toward speculators, a sentiment that might have even been reinforced since the latest financial crisis, during which taxpayer money was warranted or spent to bail out reckless investors. In this paper, we conjecture that judges may also have anti-speculator sentiment, which might affect their professional decision making. We asked 123 professional lawyers and 247 law students in Germany this question, and they clearly predicted that judges would have an anti-speculator bias. However, in an actual behavioral study, 185 judges did not exhibit such bias. In another sample of 170 professional lawyers, we found weak support for an anti-speculator bias. This evidence suggests that an independent audience may actually perceive unbiased judgments as biased. While the literature usually suggests that a communication problem exists between lawyers and non-lawyers (i.e. between judges and the general public), we find that this problem can also exist within the legal community.
Highlights
IntroductionJudges are supposed to decide cases solely on legal grounds (i.e. based on arguments the law deems relevant) and to disregard arguments that appeal to their personal moral, political, or philosophical standards but are irrelevant from a legal standpoint
Judges are supposed to decide cases solely on legal grounds and to disregard arguments that appeal to their personal moral, political, or philosophical standards but are irrelevant from a legal standpoint
We provide evidence that judges’ decisions are not influenced by legally irrelevant sentiment toward speculators, even though we find that two independent samples of 123 professional lawyers and 247 law students expect them to be biased against speculators
Summary
Judges are supposed to decide cases solely on legal grounds (i.e. based on arguments the law deems relevant) and to disregard arguments that appeal to their personal moral, political, or philosophical standards but are irrelevant from a legal standpoint. Judges often engage in what psychologists call “motivated reasoning” (Braman 2010; Kunda 1990; Sood 2013; Spellman and Schauer 2012) They want to convince their audience (e.g., individuals in the general public or the regulatory apparatus of the federal government, see Baum 2006; Black et al 2016) and are focused on reaching certain conclusions. This motivation can affect judges’ information search and processing as well as other components of the decision-making process. This same point finds support in psychological research on confirmation bias (e.g., Snyder and Swann 1978)
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