The New Settlement Tools

By protecting the right to a jury, the state and federal constitutions recognize the fundamental value of having civil and criminal disputes resolved by laypersons. Actual trials, however, are relatively rare, in part because parties seek to avoid the risks and cost of trials and courts seek to clear dockets efficiently. But as desirable as settlement may be, it can be a difficult way to resolve a dispute. Parties view their cases from different perspectives, and these perspectives often cause both sides to be overly optimistic and to expect unreasonably large or unreasonably small resolutions. This article describes a novel method of incorporating layperson perspectives to provide parties with more accurate information about the value of a case: We suggest that parties work with mediators or settlement judges to create mini-trials and recruit hundreds of online mock jurors to render decisions. By applying modern statistical techniques to these results, the mediators could show the parties the likelihood of possible outcomes and collect qualitative information about strengths and weaknesses for each side. These data will better inform the parties’ views and should thereby facilitate settlement

OK Cupid, Stop Bumbling around and Match Me Tinder: Using Dating Apps Across the Life Course

Social connectedness, sex, and intimacy are all factors associated with positive aging, facing individuals in society across the life course. Phenomenal technological developments in the 21st century have led to the increased use of smartphones, mobile apps, and dating apps for a myriad of services, and engagements. This paper focuses on two specific cohorts’ who have the opportunity to engage with dating apps, older adults and young citizens with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions, and highlights issues related to the intersection of technology, societal constructions of age, disability, and online dating

The Novel New Jersey Eyewitness Instruction Induces Skepticism but Not Sensitivity

In recent decades, social scientists have shown that the reliability of eyewitness identifications is much worse than laypersons tend to believe. Although courts have only recently begun to react to this evidence, the New Jersey judiciary has reformed its jury instructions to notify jurors about the frailties of human memory, the potential for lineup administrators to nudge witnesses towards suspects that they police have already identified, and the advantages of alternative lineup procedures, including blinding of the administrator. This experiment tested the efficacy of New Jersey’s jury instruction. In a 2×2 between-subjects design, mock jurors (N = 335) watched a 35-minute murder trial, wherein identification quality was either “weak” or “strong” and either the New Jersey or a “standard” instruction was delivered. Jurors were more than twice as likely to convict when the standard instruction was used (OR = 2.55; 95% CI = 1.37–4.89, p \u3c 0.001). The New Jersey instruction, however, did not improve juror\u27s ability to discern quality; rather, jurors receiving those instructions indiscriminatingly discounted “weak” and “strong” testimony in equal measure

Crowdsourcing & Data Analytics: The New Settlement Tools

By protecting the right to a jury, the State and Federal Constitutions recognize the fundamental value of having civil and criminal disputes resolved by laypersons. However actual trials are relatively rare, in part because parties seek to avoid the risks and cost of trials, and courts seek to clear dockets efficiently. Even as settlement may be desirable, it is sometimes difficult to resolve a dispute. Parties naturally view their cases from different perspectives, and these perspectives often cause both sides to be overly optimistic, seeking unreasonably large or unreasonably small resolutions.This article describes a novel method of incorporating layperson perspectives to provide parties more accurate information about the value of their case. Specifically, we suggest that working with mediators or settlement judges, the parties should create mini-trials and then recruit hundreds of online mock jurors to render decisions. By applying modern statistical techniques to these results, the mediators can show the parties the likelihood of possible outcomes and also collect qualitative information about strengths and weaknesses for each side. These data will counter the parties’ unrealistic views and thereby facilitate settlement

Countering the Plaintiff’s Anchor: Jury Simulations to Evaluate Damages Arguments

Numerous studies have shown that anchoring strongly effects juries. For scholars and policymakers, this evidence is worrisome for the legitimacy and accuracy of jury decisions, especially in the domain of non-economic damages (e.g., pain and suffering). For litigators, this evidence had led some to believe that “the more you ask for, the more you get.” Others believe that the damage demand must pass the “straight-face” test. But little scholarly literature exist to determine whether an outrageously high request really does undermine the plaintiff’s credibility, and whether this “credibility” effect outweighs the anchoring effect. Likewise, little scholarly attention considers whether a defendant can effectively respond to the plaintiff’s high anchor. One obvious strategy would be a “counter-anchor” – the defendant suggesting a much lower damages award. However, defense attorneys worry that juries may interpret such a strategy as an admission of liability. Thus, in fact, defendants often allow the plaintiff’s anchor to go unrebutted, but this strategy has also not been rigorously tested. To answer these questions, we conducted a randomized controlled experiment in which we exposed mock jurors to a shortened medical malpractice trial, manipulated with six different sets of damages arguments in factorial design. The plaintiff demanded either $250,000 or$5,000,000 non-economic damages. The defendant responded in one of three ways: (1) offering the counter-anchor that, if any damages are awarded, they should only be $50,000; (2) ignoring the plaintiff’s damage demand; or (3) attacking the plaintiff’s demand as outrageous and using this characterization to argue that the plaintiff’s entire case was not credible. Mock jurors were then asked to render a decision on both liability and damages. We then ran these individuals decisions through a computer simulation to create mock jury decisions. Our study confirmed that anchoring has a powerful effect on the amount of damages mock juries award. However, a large damages demand also had a small negative effect on liability determinations. When looking at the expected value of the case – the average award when both liability and damage award are considered – these “credibility effects” were overwhelmed by anchoring effects. Different defendant responses also resulted in different outcomes when plaintiff anchored low, but none of these defense strategies are an effective antidote to the plaintiffs’ high anchor. We discuss implications for litigation strategy and policy

A Randomized Experiment of the Split Benefit Health Insurance Reform to Reduce High-Cost, Low-Value Consumption

Traditional cost sharing for health care is stymied by limited patient wealth. The “split benefit” is a new way to reduce consumption of high-cost, low-value treatments for which the risk/benefit ratio is uncertain. When a physician prescribes a costly unproven procedure, the insurer could pay a portion of the benefit directly to the patient, creating a decision opportunity for the patient. The insurer saves the remainder, unless the patient consumes. In this paper, a vignette-based randomized controlled experiment with 1,800 respondents sought to test the potential efficacy of the split benefit. The intervention reduced the odds of consumption by about half. It did so regardless of scenario (cancer or cardiac stent), type of split (rebate, prepay, or health savings account), or amount of split (US$5,000 or US$15,000). Respondents viewed the insurer that paid a split as behaving fairly, as it preserved access and choice. Three-quarters of respondents supported such use in Medicare, which did not depend on political party affiliation. The reform is promising for further testing since it has the potential to decrease spending on low-value interventions, and thereby increase the value of the health care dollar

Lessons for COVID-19 vaccination from eight federal government direct communication evaluations

We discuss eight randomized evaluations intended to increase vaccination uptake conducted by the US General Services Administration’s Office of Evaluation Sciences (OES). These evaluations had a median sample size of 55,000, deployed a variety of behaviorally-informed direct communications, and used administrative data to measure vaccination uptake. The confidence interval from an internal meta-analysis shows changes in vaccination rates ranging from -0.004 to 0.394 percentage points. Two studies yielded statistically significant increases, of 0.59 and 0.16 percentage points. The other six were not statistically significant, although the studies were powered to detect effect sizes in line with published research. This work highlights the likely effects of government communications and demonstrates the value of conducting rapid evaluations to support COVID-19 vaccination efforts

Can Moral Framing Drive Insurance Enrollment in the US?

To encourage health insurance uptake, marketers and policymakers have focused on consumers’ economic self-interest, attempting to show that insurance is a good deal or to sweeten the deal, with subsidies or penalties. Still, some consumers see insurance as a bad deal, either because they rationally exploit private risk information (“adverse selection”), or irrationally misperceive the value due to cognitive biases (e.g., optimism). As a result, about 30 million Americans remain uninsured, including many who could afford it.At the same time, polling suggests that Americans view health insurance through a moral lens, seeking to protect those with pre-existing conditions especially. In other markets, “green halo” and “noble edge” frames have been shown effective. As part of a broader research agenda on private law solutions to healthcare policy, we test whether moral framing could support insurance uptake. We report four phases of research.First, to understand current health insurance marketing in America, we collected the universe of advertisements from the state and Federal exchanges and coded a 10% sample for themes of economic self-interest versus three moral themes: helping others, helping community, or responsibility. In the 199 ads in which any theme appeared, 191 ads (96%, CI: 92-98%) centered on economic self-interest.Second, we enrolled 344 uninsured Americans in an online, vignette experiment where we offered various insurance plans. Over a baseline where 43.6% were willing to purchase insurance, we found that framing an economically-identical plan around generosity yielded an 11.8% higher uptake.Third, we conducted five focus groups with 32 adults, including two groups in Spanish. We explored variations in the frames and probed for resistance, to prepare for the next phase of research.Fourth, using an online advertising platform (Google), we purchased 5.6 million advertising impressions in English and Spanish, targeting higher-income Americans nationwide during the 2021 open-enrollment period. Consumers saw advertisements from a control group (highlighting economic self-interest, with real ads collected from the field) versus three experimental groups (helping others, helping community, or responsibility). We measured whether consumers clicked to “shop now” on the healthcare.gov website (1.01% click-through rate (CTR) in English and 1.38% CTR in Spanish at baseline). “Helping community” ads increased CTR over the control by 14.5% in English and by 33.7% in Spanish. Ads emphasizing “responsibility” increased CTR by 30.3% in English, though reduced CTR by 14.7% in Spanish. “Helping others” ads increased CTR by 9.8% in English but decreased CTR by 13.9% in Spanish. All of these results were significant at the .01 level and were robust to demographic controls and subgroup analyses, using individual and county-level covariates.Although the optimal approach varies, the status quo self-oriented message of economic rationality was not the top-performing approach for either language group. Scaled up to real-world advertising budgets, back-of-the-envelope extrapolation suggests that under moral framing, millions of additional Americans could be driven to shop for health insurance