| Cognition is an important way for human beings to obtain information from the outside world,and it is difficult for judges to get rid of the application of cognition in constructing facts and applying laws in the process of litigation.From the judge’s review of the case file materials transferred by the procuratorial authorities to the certification of the content of the examination of the prosecution and defense in the trial,and even to the final decision on the facts of the case,all of them are related to the judge’s cognition.The judge’s perception of the facts of the case is derived from the evidence and other supporting materials generated around the facts,but the retrospective nature of justice determines that the basis for perception of the facts of the case is not always complete,so in order to fill in the gaps in the construction of the facts,the judge will inevitably add their own preferences,experience and value judgments and other subjective factors,which is sufficient to show that there is inevitably cognitive subjectivity in the process of the judge’s decision.And this chain reaction ultimately provides space for the existence of of cognitive bias on the part of judges.Although cognitive bias do not necessarily equate with cognitive error,it does not mean that we can ignore the negative effects of cognitive bias.For example,the preconception of guilt in some wrongful cases influenced by tunnel vision and the anchoring effect,which not only violates procedural justice,but also produces wrongful judgments that go against substantive justice.In practice,however,it is difficult for judges to recognize the existence of their own biases,and they tend to define cognitive bias as a sense of law or legal intuition,not to mention the need to curb its negative effects on the basis of awareness.Therefore,the focus of this paper is on the negative effects of cognitive bias on judges’ judgment and how to counteract the negative effects of cognitive bias.This paper is divided into four chapters.The first chapter is an analysis of the mechanism of cognitive bias in criminal litigation,which focuses on the inevitability of cognitive bias.By sorting out the substance of judges’ cognitive bias,it is made clear that cognitive bias is by no means a cognitive error,and other concepts that may be confused with cognitive bias are clarified.The second chapter turns to reality,examines the specific types of cognitive bias that judges may produce in judicial judgment,and illustrates the negative effects of cognitive bias in the context of case law,thereby clarifying the need to mitigate its negative effects in order to legitimize judges’ decisions.The third chapter analyzes the subjective and objective elements of the judge’s cognitive bias.The objective elements mainly from the hierarchical system of the judicial system,procedural inertia and the inequality of the strength and status of the prosecution and the defense;The subjective elements start from the irrational factors such as cognitive schema,intuition and cognitive motivation,and the guidance of the concept of punishment for crime.Chapter four focuses on the exploration of ways to weaken the negative influence of judge cognitive bias.In order to echo the subjective and objective factors of cognitive bias mentioned above,this paper also starts with the internal self-adjustment of judges and the construction of external objective system,so as to adapt dual measures simultaneously to reduce the negative effects of cognitive bias in the cognitive process of judges. |
