Towards a Better Understanding of Lawyers’ Judgmental Biases in Client Representation: The Role of Need for Cognitive Closure

Previous research demonstrates that lawyers and law students are, on average, prone to overconfidence bias and self-serving judgments of fairness when they take on a representative lawyering role. This is the first study to investigate individual differences in susceptibility to these biases. Expanding on two previous experiments, and utilizing as our sample 468 law students from twelve geographically diverse U.S. law schools, we examined whether differences in students’ Need for Cognitive Closure (NFC) — a motivational desire for clear answers over ambiguity — would affect both their judicial outcome predictions and their assessments of the “fair settlement value” of a simulated personal injury case when assigned randomly to the role of plaintiff’s or defendant’s counsel. We also investigated whether high- or low-NFC scores would have any effect on the efficacy of a “consider-the-opposite” (“list the weaknesses of your case”) prompt given to half of our subjects in an effort to de-bias these assessments. We found that a high need for closure intensifies self-serving bias in both students’ judicial predictions and fair value assessments, and that bias in students’ judicial predictions could be mitigated through debiasing interventions, even with students high in need for closure. Bias in fairness assessments persisted, despite de-biasing prompts

Changing Minds: The Work of Mediators and Empirical Studies of Persuasion

The use of mediation has grown exponentially in recent years in courts, agencies, and community settings. Yet the field of mediation still operates to a considerable extent on folklore and opinion, rather than reliable knowledge. Mediator attempts at persuasion are pervasive in a wide variety of mediation contexts, yet “persuasion” is, for some, a pejorative word and a contested norm in the field. Perhaps as a result, there has been little, if any, evidence-based writing about what kinds of persuasive appeals might be effective in mediation, how they might operate, and how they might be experienced by disputants. In an effort to begin to fill that void, this article examines empirical research findings on persuasion from such diverse fields as advertising, public health, communications, politics and race relations. It focuses on studies of both indirect or behavioral approaches to persuasion (role reversal, apology, group brainstorming) and different types of direct persuasive appeals (questions vs. statements, more vs. less explicit statements, use of “negative” emotions such as fear and guilt, and sequential vs. straightforward requests for concessions). As almost none of the empirical work on persuasion has involved dispute resolution, the article raises questions about how these social science findings might apply to the work of mediators. Some of the research findings described in this article are unsurprising, while others may challenge common assumptions. Where the research appears at odds with conventional mediation wisdom, the authors discuss its potential implications for ongoing philosophical and skills-based debates in the field. Of particular note, the literature canvassed in this article may cast new light on old debates about facilitative versus evaluative mediation, and the importance of mediators having substantive, as well as process, expertise

Improving Lawyers’ Judgment: Is Mediation Training De-Biasing?

When people are placed in a partisan role or otherwise have an objective they seek to accomplish, they are prone to pervasive cognitive and motivational biases. These judgmental distortions can affect what people believe and wish to find out, the predictions they make, the strategic decisions they employ, and what they think is fair. A classic example is confirmation bias, which can cause its victims to seek and interpret information in ways that are consistent with their pre-existing views or the goals they aim to achieve. Studies consistently show that experts as well as laypeople are prone to such biases, and that they are highly resistant to change, in large part because people are generally unaware that they are operating. When they affect lawyers, egocentric, partisan and role biases can hinder the ability to provide objective advice to clients, lead to overly optimistic forecasts about the probability of future events, and promote “we-they” thinking that can exacerbate and prolong conflicts, imposing substantial costs on both clients and society. There is reason to believe that by placing people in a mediative stance—one in which people impartially try to help disputants resolve a conflict—they can develop habits of objectivity crucial to much of what lawyers are called upon to do. That this is so is supported by social science research on two specific strategies for de-biasing judgment—considering alternative scenarios and taking another’s perspective—both core mediator mindsets. Research also shows that active engagement in such de-biasing activity is more effective in achieving objectivity than is mere instruction about the existence of cognitive biases. The authors consider the implications of this research for law school clinical programming and legal education in general

Physical State of Molecular Gas in High Galactic Latitude Translucent Clouds

The rotational transitions of carbon monoxide (CO) are the primary means of investigating the density and velocity structure of the molecular interstellar medium. Here we study the lowest four rotational transitions of CO towards high-latitude translucent molecular clouds (HLCs). We report new observations of the J = (4-3), (2-1), and (1-0) transitions of CO towards eight high-latitude clouds. The new observations are combined with data from the literature to show that the emission from all observed CO transitions is linearly correlated. This implies that the excitation conditions which lead to emission in these transitions are uniform throughout the clouds. Observed 13CO/12CO (1-0) integrated intensity ratios are generally much greater than the expected abundance ratio of the two species, indicating that the regions which emit 12CO (1-0) radiation are optically thick. We develop a statistical method to compare the observed line ratios with models of CO excitation and radiative transfer. This enables us to determine the most likely portion of the physical parameter space which is compatible with the observations. The model enables us to rule out CO gas temperatures greater than 30K since the most likely high-temperature configurations are 1 pc-sized structures aligned along the line of sight. The most probable solution is a high density and low temperature (HDLT) solution. The CO cell size is approximately 0.01 pc (2000 AU). These cells are thus tiny fragments within the 100 times larger CO-emitting extent of a typical high-latitude cloud. We discuss the physical implications of HDLT cells, and we suggest ways to test for their existence.Comment: 19 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables, emulateapj To be published in The Astrophysical Journa

Local variations in spatial synchrony of influenza epidemics

Background: Understanding the mechanism of influenza spread across multiple geographic scales is not complete. While the mechanism of dissemination across regions and states of the United States has been described, understanding the determinants of dissemination between counties has not been elucidated. The paucity of high resolution spatial-temporal influenza incidence data to evaluate disease structure is often not available. Methodology and Findings: We report on the underlying relationship between the spread of influenza and human movement between counties of one state. Significant synchrony in the timing of epidemics exists across the entire state and decay with distance (regional correlation = 62%). Synchrony as a function of population size display evidence of hierarchical spread with more synchronized epidemics occurring among the most populated counties. A gravity model describing movement between two populations is a stronger predictor of influenza spread than adult movement to and from workplaces suggesting that non-routine and leisure travel drive local epidemics. Conclusions: These findings highlight the complex nature of influenza spread across multiple geographic scales. © 2012 Stark et al

Comparison of a Head Mounted Impact Measurement Device to the Hybrid III Anthropomorphic Testing Device in a Controlled Laboratory Setting

Background: Reports estimate that 1.6 to 3.8 million cases of concussion occur in sports and recreation each year in the United States. Despite continued efforts to reduce the occurrence of concussion, the rate of diagnosis continues to increase. The mechanisms of concussion are thought to involve linear and rotational head accelerations and velocities. One method of quantifying the kinematics experienced during sport participation is to place measurement devices into the athlete’s helmet or directly on the athlete’s head. Purpose: The purpose of this research to determine the accuracy of a head mounted device for measuring the head accelerations experienced by the wearer. This will be accomplished by identifying the error in Peak Linear Acceleration (PLA), Peak Rotational Acceleration (PRA) and Peak Rotational Velocity (PRV) of the device. Study Design: Laboratory study. Methods: A helmeted Hybrid III 50th percentile male headform was impacted via a pneumatic ram from the front, side, rear, front oblique and rear oblique at speeds from 1.5 to 5 m/s. The X2 Biosystems xPatch® (Seattle, WA) sensor was placed on the headform’s right side at the approximate location of the mastoid process. Measures of PLA, PRA, PRV from the xPatch ® and Hybrid III were analyzed for Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), and Absolute and Relative Error (AE, RE). Result: Seventy-six impacts were analyzed. All measures of correlation, fixed through the origin, were found to be strong: PLA R2 =0.967 p \u3c 0.01, PRA R2 =0.933 p \u3c 0.01, PRV R2 =0.999 p \u3c 0.00. PLA RMSE was 34%, RE 31.0% ± 14.0, and AE 31.1% ± 13.7. PRA RMSE was 23.4%, RE -6.7 ± 22.4 and AE 18.9% ± 13.8. PRV RMSE was 2.2%, RE 0.1 ± 2.2, and AE 1.8 ± 1.3. Conclusion: Without including corrections for effect of skin artifact, the xPatch® produces measurements highly correlated with the gold standard yet above the average error of testing devices in both PLA and PRA, but a low error in PRV. PLA measures from the xPatch® system demonstrated a high level of correlation with the PLA data from the Hybrid III mounted data collection system. Level of Evidence:

A Bayesian Evidence Synthesis Approach to Estimate Disease Prevalence in Hard-To-Reach Populations: Hepatitis C in New York City

Existing methods to estimate the prevalence of chronic hepatitis C (HCV) in New York City (NYC) are limited in scope and fail to assess hard-to-reach subpopulations with highest risk such as injecting drug users (IDUs). To address these limitations, we employ a Bayesian multi-parameter evidence synthesis model to systematically combine multiple sources of data, account for bias in certain data sources, and provide unbiased HCV prevalence estimates with associated uncertainty. Our approach improves on previous estimates by explicitly accounting for injecting drug use and including data from high-risk subpopulations such as the incarcerated, and is more inclusive, utilizing ten NYC data sources. In addition, we derive two new equations to allow age at first injecting drug use data for former and current IDUs to be incorporated into the Bayesian evidence synthesis, a first for this type of model. Our estimated overall HCV prevalence as of 2012 among NYC adults aged 20-59 years is 2.78% (95% CI 2.61-2.94%), which represents between 124,900 and 140,000 chronic HCV cases. These estimates suggest that HCV prevalence in NYC is higher than previously indicated from household surveys (2.2%) and the surveillance system (2.37%), and that HCV transmission is increasing among young injecting adults in NYC. An ancillary benefit from our results is an estimate of current IDUs aged 20-59 in NYC: 0.58% or 27,600 individuals