The Effect Of Hindsight Bias In Judicial Decision-making

In the field of psychology,hindsight bias is a common phenomenon in people's cognitive process.Specifically,when people are informed of the outcome of an event,they will think that the outcome is inevitable without conscious control.Not only that,but the hindsight bias also affects the predictability with which one evaluates the outcome,i.e.,the known outcome is more predictable at the time than any other possible outcome.That is to say,people give different evaluations of the same thing before and after the given outcome,and they generally don't realize the impact of the given outcome.These are cognitive biases caused by the hindsight effect.It is worth noting that,unlike ordinary decision-making,judicial decision-making is made by the judge or jury based on the facts of the case learned in the trial and adopting the corresponding evidentiary materials.Based on the current judicial trial process,the judge usually knows the outcome of the case during the court investigation and court debate,that is,the judicial decision is judged after knowing the result,and the known result is easy for the judge to produce a hindsight effect in the decision-making process.Under the influence of the hindsight effect,if the judge has a deviation from the fact finding,he may eventually make a judgment that is contrary to the judicial impartiality.Based on the universality and production method of hindsight bias,in order to avoid its influence on judicial decision-making,judges must consciously ignore the known results in terms of fact recognition,and objectively analyze the development process of the whole event from the perspective of the results before the occurrence.The psychological state of the parties.Positive research on the hindsight bias was born in the 1970 s in the United States and has formed a standard research paradigm.Due to the universality and uniqueness of hindsight bias,more and more psychological researchers begin to join in the research and analysis of hindsight bias,and the crossover research with other disciplines has begun to take shape.Over the years,it has been found that the areas where hindsight bias exists are very common,such as business decisions,medical diagnoses,and political elections.On the contrary,although some scholars are involved in the interdisciplinary study of the combination of psychology and law,few scholars have systematically studied it.The research on hindsight bias and judicial decision-making is almost blank in China.Therefore,based on this situation,this paper focuses on the hindsight bias,and conducts a positive study on the hindsight bias in legal decision-making.The experiment was designed with undergraduate students as subjects,using the single factor and three levels of experimental design between and within the subjects,variables were positive,neutral and negative outcomes as well as gender and different majors.The research results show that :(1)the judgment of different individuals on the liability for tort will be affected by the result of the case,but the positive result will have little impact on the decision,while the negative result will seriously affect people's decision;(2)both men and women have hindsight bias,but there is no significant difference in the degree;(3)under the same conditions,subjects majoring in law and illegality are also affected by the hindsight bias,and there is no significant difference in their decision-making results.(4)the same individual's determination of liability for fault tort will be affected by different results.Compared with the foresight group,the positive results have no significant influence on the subject's decision,while the negative results have significant influence on the subject's decision.The last part of this paper summarizes the psychological mechanism of hindsight bias and several strategies for eliminating or reducing it,including warning the existence of hindsight bias,trial by stages,abiding by the rules before and considering the substitution results,among which trial by stages and considering the substitution results can effectively reduce the effect of hindsight bias.The study of hindsight bias has certain theoretical and practical significance.In terms of theory,it is helpful to understand the definition of hindsight bias in psychology and its psychological mechanism,so as to put forward more targeted strategies to eliminate it.In terms of practical significance,under the general trend of China's judicial system reform,the study of hindsight bias combined with legal decision-making can explore from different angles how to make judicial decision-making truly fair and just.In addition,revealing the defects and deficiencies of the judicial judgment from the psychological perspective is helpful to improve the judicial procedure of our country,and provides some references for the legislative and judicial departments in law making and law practice at a certain level.