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Full-Text Articles in Social Psychology
It Must Have Been Him: Coherence Effects Within The Legal System, Jonathan N. Carbone
It Must Have Been Him: Coherence Effects Within The Legal System, Jonathan N. Carbone
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The present series of studies examine how jurors and public defenders evaluate different pieces of evidence and integrate them into a coherent conclusion within the context of a criminal case. Previous research has shown that in situations where both sides of the case are compelling, decision-makers nevertheless come to highly confident and polarized decisions, called coherence shifts (Simon, 2004). The present research sought to expand on coherence effects, improve upon the methodology of previous studies, and explore potential moderators of coherence. In Study 1, mock jurors (n = 306) read about a criminal case and evaluated multiple pieces of …
Knowing When To Trust Others: An Erp Study Of Decision-Making After Receiving Information From Unknown People, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Seana Coulson
Knowing When To Trust Others: An Erp Study Of Decision-Making After Receiving Information From Unknown People, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Seana Coulson
Faculty Scholarship
To address the neurocognitive mechanisms that underlie choices made after receiving information from an anonymous individual, reaction times (Experiment 1) and event-related brain potentials (Experiment 2) were recorded as participants played 3 variants of the Coin Toss game. In this game, participants guess the outcomes of unseen coin tosses after a person in another room (dubbed “the reporter”) observes the coin toss outcomes and then sends reports (which may or may not be truthful) to participants about whether the coins landed on heads or tails. Participants knew that the reporter's interests either were aligned with their own (Common Interests), opposed …
Nothing But The Truth? Experiments On Adversarial Competition, Expert Testimony, And Decision Making, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins
Nothing But The Truth? Experiments On Adversarial Competition, Expert Testimony, And Decision Making, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins
Faculty Scholarship
Many scholars debate whether a competition between experts in legal, political, or economic contexts elicits truthful information and, in turn, enables people to make informed decisions. Thus, we analyze experimentally the conditions under which competition between experts induces the experts to make truthful statements and enables jurors listening to these statements to improve their decisions. Our results demonstrate that, contrary to game theoretic predictions and contrary to critics of our adversarial legal system, competition induces enough truth telling to allow jurors to improve their decisions. Then, when we impose additional institutions (such as penalties for lying or the threat of …