Study of the Effects of Anchorage in Judicial Judgements in Child Custody Dispute Proceedings

  1. FRANCISCA FARIÑA 1
  2. LAURA REDONDO 1
  3. TANIA CORRÁS 2
  4. MANUEL VILARIÑO 3
  1. 1 Departamento AIPSE, Universidade de Vigo
  2. 2 Unidade de Psicoloxía Forense, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
  3. 3 Departamento de Psicología y Sociología, Universidad de Zaragoza
Show affiliations +
Journal:
Acción psicológica

ISSN: 1578-908X

Year of publication: 2017

Issue Title: Juridic Pyschology

Volume: 14

Issue: 2

Pages: 147-156

Type: Article

DOI: 10.5944/AP.14.2.21239 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: Acción psicológica

Abstract

Judicial judgment and decision making should be sus­tained in formal or statistical reasoning, avoiding biased reasoning. Thus, judicial reasoning should not contain any bias. A profusely studied source of bias is anchorage implying a cognitive saving by accepting the initial hy­pothesis without confirming it and rejecting other infor­mation or alternative hypotheses though they may be rel­evant to the task at hand. As for knowing the prevalence and effects of anchored sentences in family cases’ judi­cial sentences, 811 Spanish custody dispute sentences were randomly selected from the CENDOJ data base. Anchorage was measured through initial claimant in child custody dispute (first instance court) or prior judi­cial decision-making (appeal court). The results stated that 70.2 % of the judicial sentences were anchored. A systematic content analysis of the sentences gave support to the hypothesis that anchorage provides judges and courts a skill to save cognitive activity (about 12 %). Moreover, anchored sentences contained significantly fewer reasoning favourable to custody; fewer idiosyn­cratic information i.e., own reasoning of the judge; and fewer contextual information i.e., less evidence-based. The implications for judicial judgment and decision are discussed, as well as the possibilities to control the an­chorage prevalence in judicial sentences.

Bibliographic References

  • Amato, P. R. (2001). Children of Divorce in the 1990s: An update of the Amato and Keith (1991) meta-analysis. Journal of Family Psychology, 15, 355-370. https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.15.3.355
  • Amato, P. R. & Anthony, C. J. (2014). Estimating the Effects of Parental Divorce and Death with Fixed Effects Models. Journal of Marriage and Family, 76, 370-386. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12100
  • Amato, P. R. & Keith, B. (1991). Parental Divorce and the Well-Being of Children: A Meta-Analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 26-46. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.110.1.26
  • American Psychological Association. (2010). Guidelines for Child Custody Evaluations in Family Proceedings. American Psychologist, 49, 677-680. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021250
  • Arce, R., Fariña, F., & Fraga, A. (2000). Género y formación de juicios en un caso de violación [Gender and Juror Judgment Making in a Case of Rape]. Psicothema, 12, 623-628. Retrieved from http://www.psicothema.com/pdf/381.pdf
  • Arce, R., Fariña, F., & Seijo, D. (2005). Razonamientos judiciales en procesos de separación: Análisis cognitivo y de contenido de las motivaciones [Judicial Reasoning in Parental Separation and Divorce Proceedings: Content and Cognitive Analysis of Judicial Reasoning]. Psicothema, 17, 57-63. Retrieved from http://www.psicothema.com/pdf/3064.pdf
  • Bardin, L. (1996). El análisis de contenido (2nd.) [Content Analysis]. Madrid, Spain: Akal.
  • Corrás, T., Seijo, D., Fariña, F., Novo, M., Arce, R., & Cabanach, R. G. (2017). What and How Much Do Children Lose in Academic Settings Owing to Parental Separation? Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1545. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01545
  • Dixon, W. J. & Massey, F. J. Mr. (1983). Introduction to Statistical Analysis (4th Ed.). New York: MacGraw-Hill.
  • Englich, B. & Mussweiler, T. (2001). Sentencing under Uncertainty: Anchoring Effects in the Courtroom. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 31, 1535-155.
  • Eurostat. (2015). Marriage and Divorce Statistics. Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Marriage_and_divorce_statistics
  • Fariña, F., Arce, R., & Novo, M. (2002). Heurístico de anclaje en las decisiones judiciales [Anchorage in Judicial Decision Making]. Psicothema, 14, 39-46. Retrieved from http://www.psicothema.com/pdf/684.pdf
  • Hunter, J. E. & Schmidt, F. L. (2015). Methods of Meta-Analysis: Correcting Errors and Bias in Research Findings (3rd Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  • Instituto Nacional de Estadística. (2016). Estadística de nulidades, separaciones y divorcios: Año 2015 [Statistics of Matrimonial Nullities, Separations and Divorces: 2015 Year]. Madrid, Spain: Instituto Nacional de Esatdística. Retrieved from http://www.ine.es/prensa/np990.pdf
  • Kreiner, M. (2009). Into the Twilight Zone: Informing Judicial Discretion in Federal Sentencing. Drake Law Review, 57, 591-642.
  • Kruglanski, A. W. & Azjen, I. (1983). Bias and Error in Human Judgment. European Journal of Social Psychology, 13, 1-44.
  • Martí-Sánchez, S. (2003, December). Sinopsis artículo 20. Madrid, Spain: Congreso de los Diputados. Retrieved from http://www.congreso.es/consti/constitucion/indice/sinopsis/sinopsis.jsp?art=120&tipo=2
  • Martindale, D. A., Martin, L., Autin, W. G., & Task Force Members (2007). Model standards of practice for child custody evaluations. Family Court Review, 45, 70-91. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-1617.2007.129_3.x
  • Nisbett, R. E. & Ross, L. (1980). Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment. Englewood Cliffts, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
  • Novo, M. & Seijo, D. (2010). Judicial Judgement-Making and Legal Criteria of Testimonial Credibility. European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context, 2, 91-115. Retrieved from http://sepjf.webs.uvigo.es/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=26&Itemid=110〈=es
  • Olson, C. L. (1976). On Choosing a Test Statistic in Manova. Psychological Bulletin, 83, 579-586. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.83.4.579
  • Palmer, A. L. (1996). Análisis unifactorial de variancia [Unifactorial Variance Analysis] Palma de Mallorca, Spain: Servei de Publicacions de la UIB.
  • Plous, S. (1993). The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
  • Rosenthal, R. & Rubin, D. B. (1982). A Simple, General Purpose Display of Magnitude of Experimental Effect. Journal of Educational Psychology, 74, 166-169.
  • Ross, L. (1977). The Intuitive Psychologist and his Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 173-220). New York, NY: Academic Press.
  • Ross, L. & Lepper, M. R. (1980). The Perseverance of Beliefs: Empirical and Normative Considerations. In R. A. Shweder & D. Fiske (Eds.), New directions of methodology of behavioral science: Fallible judgment in behavioral research. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
  • Saks, M. J. & Kidd, R. F. (1986). Human Processing Information: Trial by Heuristics. In H. R. Arkes & R. H. Hammond (Eds.), Judgment and decision making. An interdisciplinary reader (pp. 213-242). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  • Seijo, D., Fariña, F., Corras, T., Novo, M., & Arce, R. (2016). Estimating the Epidemiology and Quantifying the Damages of Parental Separation in Children and Adolescents. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1611. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01611
  • Stevens, J. (1986). Applied Multivariate Statistics for Social Sciences. Hillsdale, NJ: LEA.
  • Sun, Y. (2001). Family Environment and Adolescents' Well-Being before and after Parents' Marital Disruption: A Longitudinal Analysis. Journal of Marriage and Family, 63, 697-713. https://doi.org/0.1111/j.1741-3737.2001.00697.x
  • Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, 185, 1124-1131.
  • Wagenaar, W. A. (1995). Anchored Narratives: A Theory of Judicial Reasoning. In G. Davies, S. Lloyd-Bostock, M. McMurram, & C. Wilson (Eds.), Psychology, law and criminal justice (pp. 267-285). Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter.
  • Wicker, A. W. (1975). An application of the Multitrait-Multimethod Logic to the Reliability of Observational Records. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 4, 575-579. https://doi.org/10.1177/014616727500100405
Data source: Dialnet