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

2. 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

3. 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)

4. 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

5. 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: ______

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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.”

9. 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

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

11. 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

12. 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

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

14. 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

15. 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

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

17. 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

18. Results

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

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