The Etiology of Bias: Social Heuristics and Rational Decision Making in Deviance Processing

Abstract

This article attempts to redress a critical conceptual and methodological weakness in prevailing research on bias in deviant status attainment processes by focusing explicit attention on the dynamic, sequential, and reflexive nature of processing. The argument put forth here is that while processors are oriented toward rational decision making, uncertainty is an inherent part of judgements. As a result, effective decision making requires the use of available social heuristics to make decisions possible and still rational in appearance. We suggest that one underlying heuristic is typescripting. When recent anomalies in data on bias in criminal and juvenile justice processing are viewed with a dynamic model of processing that incorporates the idea of social heuristics, they appear to make sense. We discuss some of these anomalies, present some illustrative data from a large-scale survey of juveniles, and use the model to predict some counterintuitive findings.