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Cognitive
Incentives, Performance and Choking in Darts
June 14, 2019
This paper examines the effect of incentives on the performance of darts players. We analyze four data sets covering a total of 28,761 darts matches of professional, amateur, and youth players. The game of darts offers an attractive natural research setting, because performance can be observed at the individual level and without obscuring effects of risk considerations and behavior of others. We find that amateur and youth players perform better under moderately higher incentives, but choke when...
June 14, 2019
This paper examines the effect of incentives on the performance of darts players. We analyze four data sets covering a total of 28,761 darts matches of professional, amateur, and youth players. The game of darts offers an attractive natural research setting, because performance can be observed at the individual level and without obscuring effects of risk considerations and behavior of others. We find that amateur and youth players perform better under moderately higher incentives, but choke when...
“Shooting The Messenger” Is A Psychological Reality – Share Bad News And People Will Like You Less
June 12, 2019
But it turns out this phenomenon of “shooting the messenger” is not just restricted to fiction. A new paper in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General has demonstrated that we do tend to take a dim view of the bearers of bad news – even when these people are simply innocent messengers. Altogether, the research suggests that “shooting the messenger” has a real basis in the way people act in everyday situations. It seems to stem from a number of sources,...
June 12, 2019
But it turns out this phenomenon of “shooting the messenger” is not just restricted to fiction. A new paper in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General has demonstrated that we do tend to take a dim view of the bearers of bad news – even when these people are simply innocent messengers. Altogether, the research suggests that “shooting the messenger” has a real basis in the way people act in everyday situations. It seems to stem from a number of sources,...
Settlement Malpractice
June 11, 2019
Lawyers routinely settle lawsuits or advise their clients about settlement. One might expect, therefore, that clients routinely complain about some aspect of their lawyers’ settlement services. Ten years of data from eleven jurisdictions paint a vivid, different picture: although the vast majority of civil lawsuits are resolved through negotiated settlements and although complaints against lawyers are common, fewer than 1% of reported legal malpractice cases and only about 1.5% of Bar complaints...
June 11, 2019
Lawyers routinely settle lawsuits or advise their clients about settlement. One might expect, therefore, that clients routinely complain about some aspect of their lawyers’ settlement services. Ten years of data from eleven jurisdictions paint a vivid, different picture: although the vast majority of civil lawsuits are resolved through negotiated settlements and although complaints against lawyers are common, fewer than 1% of reported legal malpractice cases and only about 1.5% of Bar complaints...
Risk & Rigor: A Lawyer’s Guide to Decision Trees for Assessing Cases and Advising Clients
June 7, 2019
Risk and Rigor offers practical guidance to lawyers, mediators, and clients on using decision trees to more rigorously think...
June 7, 2019
Risk and Rigor offers practical guidance to lawyers, mediators, and clients on using decision trees to more rigorously think...
Sorry, Laws Protecting Doctors Who Apologize Don’t Lessen Litigation
June 5, 2019
Laws intended to reduce malpractice litigation by protecting doctors who want to apologize don’t work, according to a new Vanderbilt analysis of proprietary insurance data. It turns out people sue for money and an apology doesn’t change that reality. In fact, apologies may raise the risk of claims. “The idea is simply that if providers could just say they’re sorry, that’s what patients really want. They really don’t care about punishing the doctor in a financial context, they care...
June 5, 2019
Laws intended to reduce malpractice litigation by protecting doctors who want to apologize don’t work, according to a new Vanderbilt analysis of proprietary insurance data. It turns out people sue for money and an apology doesn’t change that reality. In fact, apologies may raise the risk of claims. “The idea is simply that if providers could just say they’re sorry, that’s what patients really want. They really don’t care about punishing the doctor in a financial context, they care...
Sludge Audits
June 2, 2019
Consumers, employees, students, and others are often subjected to “sludge”: excessive or unjustified frictions, such as paperwork burdens, that cost time or money; that may make life difficult to navigate; that may be frustrating, stigmatizing, or humiliating; and that might end up depriving people of access to important goods, opportunities, and services. Because of behavioral biases and cognitive scarcity, sludge can have much more harmful effects than private and public institutions anticipate....
June 2, 2019
Consumers, employees, students, and others are often subjected to “sludge”: excessive or unjustified frictions, such as paperwork burdens, that cost time or money; that may make life difficult to navigate; that may be frustrating, stigmatizing, or humiliating; and that might end up depriving people of access to important goods, opportunities, and services. Because of behavioral biases and cognitive scarcity, sludge can have much more harmful effects than private and public institutions anticipate....
Is a bird in the hand worth two in the bush?
May 30, 2019
This consideration of value also has application in a mediation context. While the value of possible outcomes might be expressed in monetary terms for ease of comparison, it may be useful to dig a bit deeper to make sure we really understand what lies behind each party’s valuations to see if the pie to be divided is potentially bigger than it might at first appear. So is a bird in the hand worth more than two in the bush? Maybe, but you really need to know much more about the birds, how and why they...
May 30, 2019
This consideration of value also has application in a mediation context. While the value of possible outcomes might be expressed in monetary terms for ease of comparison, it may be useful to dig a bit deeper to make sure we really understand what lies behind each party’s valuations to see if the pie to be divided is potentially bigger than it might at first appear. So is a bird in the hand worth more than two in the bush? Maybe, but you really need to know much more about the birds, how and why they...
It’s Not Just About the Money and Other Food for Thought for Mediators
May 29, 2019
Get under the surface. In a long-running claim worth many tens of millions, the decision-makers appeared to have reached the end of the road. In an effort to find a way forward, we spent four hours going through my ‘Questions for a Difficult Meeting’ questionnaire. The parties prepared privately first and then, meeting together, they alternated in giving their responses. The nature of the questions is such that they needed to dig deeper to look for answers. This opened up new levels of understanding...
May 29, 2019
Get under the surface. In a long-running claim worth many tens of millions, the decision-makers appeared to have reached the end of the road. In an effort to find a way forward, we spent four hours going through my ‘Questions for a Difficult Meeting’ questionnaire. The parties prepared privately first and then, meeting together, they alternated in giving their responses. The nature of the questions is such that they needed to dig deeper to look for answers. This opened up new levels of understanding...
Towards a Better Understanding of Lawyers’ Judgmental Biases in Client Representation
May 28, 2019
Previous research demonstrates that lawyers and law students are, on average, prone to overconfidence bias and self-serving judgments of fairness when they take on a representative lawyering role. This is the first study to investigate individual differences in susceptibility to these biases. Expanding on two previous experiments (Loewenstein, et al., 1993; Babcock, Loewenstein & Issacharoff, 1998), and utilizing as our sample 468 law students from twelve geographically diverse U.S. law schools,...
May 28, 2019
Previous research demonstrates that lawyers and law students are, on average, prone to overconfidence bias and self-serving judgments of fairness when they take on a representative lawyering role. This is the first study to investigate individual differences in susceptibility to these biases. Expanding on two previous experiments (Loewenstein, et al., 1993; Babcock, Loewenstein & Issacharoff, 1998), and utilizing as our sample 468 law students from twelve geographically diverse U.S. law schools,...
Behavioral Legal Ethics and Negotiation
May 27, 2019
The 2019 Chris Beecroft Jr. Lecture with Russell Korobkin Here is a link to this year's annual Beecroft Lecture at the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution. The speaker was Russell Korobkin, Vice Dean and Richard C. Maxwell Professor of Law @ UCLA. His topic was "Behavioral Legal Ethics and Negotiation." His talk will be the basis for an article in the Nevada Law Journal.
May 27, 2019
The 2019 Chris Beecroft Jr. Lecture with Russell Korobkin Here is a link to this year's annual Beecroft Lecture at the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution. The speaker was Russell Korobkin, Vice Dean and Richard C. Maxwell Professor of Law @ UCLA. His topic was "Behavioral Legal Ethics and Negotiation." His talk will be the basis for an article in the Nevada Law Journal.
