Competition in the Courtroom: When Does Expert Testimony Improve Jurors’ Decisions?

Many scholars lament the increasing complexity of jury trials and question whether the testimony of competing experts helps unsophisticated jurors to make informed decisions. In this article, we analyze experimentally the effects that the testimony of competing experts has on (1) sophisticated versus unsophisticated subjects\u27 decisions and (2) subjects\u27 deci- sions on difficult versus easy problems. Our results demonstrate that competing expert testimony, by itself, does not help unsophisticated subjects to behave as though they are sophisticated, nor does it help subjects make comparable decisions on difficult and easy problems. When we impose additional institutions (such as penalties for lying or a threat of verification) on the competing experts, we observe such dramatic improvements in unso- phisticated subjects\u27 decisions that the gap between their decisions and those of sophisti- cated subjects closes. We find similar results when the competing experts exchange reasons for why their statements may be correct. However, additional institutions and the experts\u27 exchange of reasons are less effective at closing the gap between subjects\u27 decisions on difficult versus easy problems

The Blind Leading the Blind: Who Gets Polling Information and Does it Improve Decisions?

We analyze whether and when polls help citizens to improve their decisions. Specifically, we use experiments to investigate 1) whether and when citizens are willing to obtain polls and 2) whether and when polls help citizens to make better choices than they would have made on their own. We find that citizens are more likely to obtain polls when the decisions they must make are difficult and when they are unsophisticated. Ironically, when the decisions are difficult, the pollees are also uninformed and, therefore, do not provide useful information. We also find that when polls indicate the welfare-improving choice, citizens are able to improve their decisions. However, when polls indicate a choice that will make citizens worse off, citizens make worse decisions than they would have made on their own. These results hold regardless of whether the majority in favor of one option over the other is small or large

Nothing But the Truth? Experiments on Adversarial Competition, Expert Testimony, and Decision Making

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 verification) on the competing experts, we observe even larger improvements in the experts\u27 propensity to tell the truth and in jurors\u27 decisions. We find similar improvements when the competing experts are permitted to exchange reasons for why their statements may be correct

What Statutes Mean: Interpretive Lessons from Positive Theories of Communication and Legislation

How should judges interpret statutes? For some scholars and judges, interpreting statutes requires little more than a close examination of statutory language, with perhaps a dictionary and a few interpretive canons nearby. For others, statutory interpretation must be based upon an assessment of a statute\u27s underlying purpose, an evaluation of society\u27s current norms and values, or a normative objective, such as the law\u27s integrity. With such differences squarely framed in the literature, it is reasonable to ask whether anything of value can be added. We contend that there is

Making Talk Cheap (and Problems Easy): How Legal and Political Institutions Can Facilitate Consensus

In many legal, political, and social settings, people must reach a consensus before particular outcomes can be achieved and failing to reach a consensus may be costly. In this article, we present a theory and conduct experiments that take into account the costs associated with communicating, as well as the difficulty of the decisions that groups make. We find that when there is even a small cost (relative to the potential benefit) associated with sending information to others and/or listening, groups are much less likely to reach a consensus, primarily because they are less willing to communicate with one another. We also find that difficult problems significantly reduce group members’ willingness to communicate with one another and, therefore, hinder their ability to reach a consensus

The Judge as a Fly on the Wall: Interpretive Lessons from the Positive Political Theory of Legislation

In the modern debate over statutory interpretation, scholars frequently talk past one another, arguing for one or another interpretive approach on the basis of competing, and frequently undertheorized, conceptions of legislative supremacy and political theory. For example, so-called new textualists insist that the plain meaning approach is compelled by the U.S. Constitution and rule of law values; by contrast, theorists counseling a more dynamic approach often reject the premise of legislative supremacy that is supposed by the textualist view. A key element missing, therefore, from the modern statutory interpretation debate is a conspicuous articulation of the positive and empirical premises underlying the normative theory of interpretation; and, in particular, an unclear portrait of the theory of lawmaking supporting the theory of interpretation. In this paper, we consider statutory interpretation from the perspective of positive political theory (PPT) looking, first, at the best framework for understanding the relationship between duly authorized lawmakers and the judge/interpreters. We build upon the modern literature of communication theory to support the familiar view that a statute is best understood as an act of communication by the legislature to an audience. PPT helps us to draw various lessons for modern interpretation debates from this assumption. We consider several of these lessons in our paper, and we focus especially on the hoary debate over the use and utility of legislative history in construing ambiguous statutory language

Reporting guidelines for experimental research: A report from the experimental research section standards committee.

The standards committee of the Experimental Research section was charged with preparing a set of reporting guidelines for experimental research in political science. The committee defined its task as compiling a set of guidelines sufficient to enable the reader or reviewer to follow what the researcher had done and to assess the validity of the conclusions the researcher had drawn. Although the guidelines do request the reporting of some basic statistics, they do not attempt to weigh in on statistical controversies. Rather, they aim for something more modest but nevertheless crucial: to ensure that scholars clearly describe what it is they did at each step in their research and clearly report what their data show. In this paper, we discuss the rationale for reporting guidelines and the process used to formulate the specific guidelines we endorse. The guidelines themselves are included in Appendix 1

When do simple cues make citizens smart? : understanding the conditions under which cues improve decisions

It is widely known that citizens use cues--such as party labels, polls, candidates' appearances, and endorsements-- when making political decisions. What is still in doubt, however, is whether and under what conditions particular cues help different types of citizens to improve their decisions in different contexts. Indeed, given the multitude of cues that exist in the real world, the varied levels of sophistication among citizens, and the wide variety of situations in which citizens may find themselves, it seems unlikely that cues are equally effective for all citizens, at all times, and in all places. In my dissertation, I identify conditions under which particular cues help citizens to improve their decisions. More concretely, I assess 1) whether and under what conditions a single cue helps both sophisticated and unsophisticated citizens to improve their decisions, 2) whether and under what conditions multiple cues work better than one cue alone, and 3) whether and under what conditions citizens can learn from the statements of multiple speakers. My theoretical and empirical results show that : The statements of an endorser only improve the decisions of both sophisticated and unsophisticated citizens when the endorser's incentives are clear. Once the endorser's incentives become less transparent, this cue no longer helps citizens to improve their decisions consistently, nor does it consistently close the gap between sophisticated and unsophisticated citizens. Two cues are not necessarily better than one cue. That is, when one cue enables citizens to achieve large improvements in their decisions, the presence of a second cue does not help citizens to improve their decisions further. However, when neither cue is particularly useful by itself, these cues help citizens to make better decisions than they make with only one cue. Competition between two experts does not necessarily induce both experts to make truthful statements; thus, citizens are unable to improve their decisions under these circumstances. Indeed, competition between experts only induces truthful statements and enables the citizen to learn once it is combined with institutions. Taken together, my results demonstrate that cues are not equally effective for all citizens in all context