Information Search, Coherence Shifts and Their Interplay for Legal Decision Making

Abstract

Making legal judgments requires making sense of a complex set of usually contradicting pieces of information. Systematic judgment biases can be caused - amongst others - by unbalanced information search (confirmatory search) as well as by biased information processing and particularly coherence structuring (coherence shifts) in which the interpretation of information is changed to fit the emerging favored option. In four studies, we investigate the complex interplay between both kinds of influences. In a newly developed paradigm, participants completed three legal cases in which they could freely search for information. We manipulated between subjects whether systematic search was possible or not and measured the assessment of each investigated piece of information; moreover, we tracked the overall assessment of the case over time. In line with previous studies, we observe strong coherence shifts in each study. Contrary to our expectation, however, we mainly find disconfirmatory information search, in that people tended to search for information that was contrary to their current belief in the given case. We also observed a trend towards an interaction between both factors. Our results underline an unconscious striving for coherence when making complex judgments that cannot be easily corrected.