An Exploration of Unpacking Effects in Jury Decision Making Nick Polavin & Zheng Joyce Wang, Ph.D. Ohio State University

Non-Economic Damages Pain and suffering damages have no price tag Subjective values chosen These valuations vary greatly (Vidmar, 1994) Goal: Help jurors make more systematic decisions

Itemizing as Explanation Solution: Itemize the non-economic damages into sub-categories Reasoning: This will help jurors think about the reasons behind the non-economic damages total Separating Loss of enjoyment of life from Pain and suffering damages led to increased comprehension of instructions (Poser, Bornstein, and Kiernan, 2003)

Many States Do This Increased awards Loss of enjoyment of life: _________ Mental suffering: _________ Physical pain: _________ Disfigurement: _________ Loss of enjoyment of life, mental suffering, physical pain, and disfigurement: _________ Rather than: Non-economic damages: _________ Increased awards

Unpacking Unpacked (perceived) probabilities have been tested extensively Chance of dying from a disease (Tversky & Koehler, 1994) Chance of who committed a murder (Rottenstreitch and Tversky, 1997) Chance of which team/league will win the NBA Championship (Fox & Tversky, 1998) Rottenstreitch & Tversky, 1997: Packed: Chance that person X was murdered: ______ Unpacked: Chance that person X was murdered by an acquaintance: ______ Chance that person X was murdered by an unknown person: ______

Support Theory More information about an event → higher perceived probability of it occurring (Tversky & Koehler, 1994; Van Boven & Epley, 2003) For jury awards: As more dimensions of non-economic damages are provided, jurors should be able to think of more reasons to award money H1: Unpacked jury verdict forms will lead to higher valuations for non-economic damages than the packed communication condition.

Implicit vs. Explicit Unpacking effect uses two different versions Implicit: Chance that person X was murdered by an acquaintance or unknown person: ______ Explicit: Chance that person X was murdered by an acquaintance: ______ Chance that person X was murdered by an unknown person: ______ Gregory & Winter (2011) claim that explicit unpacking gets jurors to think differently than implicit unpacking

Typicality/Representativeness also matters There are instances where unpacked decisions lead to lower judgments 3 typical instances “Judge the probability of someone dying of heart disease, cancer, stroke, or any other disease.” 3 atypical instances “Judge the probability of someone dying of pneumonia, diabetes, cirrhosis, or any other disease.”

Typicality As more sub-categories are added, there is a greater likelihood of including atypical items (Sloman, et al., 2004) Atypical items take away attention from typical items Conclusion: Too many sub-categories may decrease judgments

Research Question Implicit vs. explicit unpacking Number of sub-categories RQ: How do different types of unpacked communication influence non-economic damages?

Method Online experiment, N = 229 participants recruited from MTurk Mean age = 39.16 52% female 81.7% White, non-Hispanic, 8.7% Asian, 5.7% Black or African American, 4.4% Hispanic/Latino, 0.9% American Indian or Alaskan Native, 0.4% other Within-Subjects Condition 163 of the subjects were given unpacked jury verdict forms 20 minute distractor task Reminded of the case and then given packed jury verdict form

Method 5 between-subjects conditions 1 category: Non-economic damages Packed, 4 explicit unpacked, 10 explicit unpacked, 4 implicit unpacked, 10 implicit unpacked 1 category: Non-economic damages 4 categories: Loss of enjoyment of life, Disfigurement, Mental suffering, and Physical pain Implicit and Explicit 10 categories: Loss of enjoyment of life, Disfigurement, Mental suffering, Physical pain, Physical impairment, Inconvenience, Grief, Anxiety, Humiliation, Emotional Distress

Unpacking with Atypical Sub-categories Loss of enjoyment of life: _________ Mental suffering: _________ Physical pain: _________ Disfigurement: _________ Physical impairment: _________ Emotional distress: _________ Inconvenience: _________ Grief: _________ Anxiety: _________ Humiliation: _________

1st Case Participants read a case A trucker hit a bicyclist as he was texting while driving Plaintiff requests $1,900,000 Defense suggests $1,270,000

2nd Case Participants read a case The defendant (a doctor) told the plaintiff that he needed surgery for an ulcer but did not discuss any of the risks with the defendant Plaintiff requests $850,000 Defense suggests $220,000

Measures DV: Valuation - Money awarded to the plaintiff Control variables Empathy: Empathic concern subscale from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) Numeracy: Subjective numeracy Story

Results Within-Subjects H1: Unpacked jury verdict forms will have higher valuations of non-economic damages than a packed version Unpacked jury verdict forms had higher valuations than packed jury verdict forms F(1, 153) = 4.34, p < .05

Results

Results Jury instruction condition affected the valuation F(4, 213) = 2.56, p < .05 Packed condition was only lower than explicit-4 condition p < .005 Explicit-4 generated higher awards than the other 3 unpacked conditions All p’s < .005 Other 3 unpacked conditions did not differ from each other

Discussion Explicit unpacking increases awards by getting jurors to think more thoroughly about the sub-categories The inclusion of atypical sub-categories will bring down the overall judgment

Study 2 Two competing theories about why the inclusion of atypical items lowers overall judgments Summation mechanism (Sloman, et al., 2004) Order will affect verdicts Averaging mechanism (Kahneman, 2011) Order will not affect verdicts

Method Online experiment, N = 234 4 sub-categories presented in an explicit unpacked version 2 conditions: Atypical sub-category presented first Atypical sub-category presented last Controlled for empathy, subjective numeracy, and story

Results & Discussion F(1, 230) = 1.70, p = .19 No significant differences between the two conditions Jurors use an averaging mechanism Order of the sub-categories does not influence judgments

Nick Polavin – polavin.1@osu.edu Zheng Joyce Wang – wang.1243@osu.edu Thank you! Nick Polavin – polavin.1@osu.edu Zheng Joyce Wang – wang.1243@osu.edu