Habits of Meaning: When Legal Education and Other Professional Training Attenuate Bias in Social Judgments
2012; RELX Group (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês
10.2139/ssrn.2065097
ISSN1556-5068
Autores Tópico(s)Psychology of Social Influence
ResumoSocial-cognitive theory explains the persistence of social bias in terms of the automatic placement of individuals into social categories, the function of which is to conserve cognitive resources while providing a basis for some (even if inaccurate) inferences.Within that paradigm, bias attenuation involves transcending social categorization through effortful individuation.Research on learning and expertise supports an alternative perspective: That training to categorize entire situations using, e.g., legal rules, their implications, and associated responses, can attenuate bias in social judgments by displacing or reducing the need to rely upon social categorization.The Competing Category Application Model (CCAM), a novel model of the effects of expertise on use of social stereotypes in judgment and decision-making, is proposed and tested.The results of three experimental studies provide strong evidence for CCAM.Across the studies, the liability decisions of untrained participants, participants trained on unrelated legal rules, and participants trained on indeterminate legal rules were consistent with the use of social stereotypes.By comparison, such stereotypes did not affect the decisions of trained participants who were applying determinate legal rules.Implications of the results and for future directions are discussed. Chapter I: IntroductionHe that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail. -Abraham MaslowIf you are good with a hammer, you may tend to think everything is a nail-but that may also mean you're less likely to end up screwing someone.-E.J. Girvan While jogging in a remote area of a large park one afternoon, Tyrone White, a 6' 2'', 195-pound tri-athlete, comes upon a child drowning in 3 feet of water.He does nothing to save her.While walking over an inner-city bridge on her way home from a new job late one night, Tiffany Baker, a recent college graduate, hears the drunken cries of a homeless man from the water below.She does nothing to save him.Under a well established (albeit ethically controversial) common law doctrine, because the experienced athlete and the young women did not cause the risk of harm or have a special relationship with the child or homeless man, respectively, neither has a duty to act and thus neither can be held liable for their inaction in preventing the drowning deaths (American Law Institute, 2011).The location, time of day, and ease of rescue are legally irrelevant, as are the relative competence, physical size, race, ethnicity, and gender of those involved.Rosemary Anderson, recently widowed, lets the ex-convict, who just moved from a half-way house into the apartment above her garage, borrow a ladder to hang some lights.Unbeknownst to her, the ladder is prone to collapse.It does so and the man is seriously injured.Golden Gopher Tools, Inc. sells a circular saw to a young couple who No Training
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