Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 20, 2026

A Psychophysics Paradigm for the Collection and Analysis of Similarity Judgments
Published on: March 1, 2022
From discretion to disagreement: explaining disparities in judges' pretrial decisions
1Department of Psychology, City University, Northampton Square, London, ECIV OHB, UK. mkdhami@uvic.ca
Abstract:
Judges are afforded considerable discretion in decision-making. Through their exercise of discretion, judges construct society's notion of crime and justice. This study examined 61 lay judges' bail decision-making in the English criminal justice system. The law states that in particular cases decisions to grant bail or remand in custody should be based on the risk of a defendant absconding, offending, or obstructing justice while on bail. However, there is little guidance on how these judgments should be made and how they should affect decisions. It was found that judges varied (disagreed) in their risk judgments and decisions on the same set of simulated cases. The extent of judicial disagreement differed across cases, and the source of disagreement in decisions lay in the variability of judges' earlier risk judgments. The paper discusses how judicial disagreement may be reduced.
Related Concept Videos
Testing a Claim about Population Proportion
There are two methods of testing a claim about a population proportion: (1) Using the sample proportion from the data where a binomial distribution is approximated to the normal distribution and (2) Using the binomial probabilities calculated from the data.
The first method uses normal distribution as an approximation to the binomial distribution. The requirements are as follows: sample size is large...
Hindsight Biases
Decision Making: Traditional Method
First, a specific claim about the population parameter is decided based on the research question and is stated in a simple form. Further, an opposing statement to this claim is also stated. These statements can act as null and alternative hypotheses, out of which a null hypothesis would be a...
Bias
In statistics, a sampling bias is created when a sample is collected from a population, and some members of the population are not as likely to be chosen as others (remember, each member...
Theory of Attribution II: Kelley's Covariation Theory
Randomized Experiments
Simple randomization
Simple...
