What is it about?

We offer a broad descriptive model of how bias affects human judgment across contexts. We also conducted the first systematic review to identify, evaluate, and summarize the role of cognitive biases and debiasing techniques in one domain in particular: forensic psychology.

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Why is it important?

Across the 22 papers included in the review (one of which had two separate studies, for a total of 23 studies reviewed), large differences between the papers made it difficult for us to compare them - and most studies (64%) did not define "bias. Most focused only on cognitive biases (69.6%), with fewer investigating ways to address them (30.4%). Of the 17 studies that tested for biases, 10 found significant effects (58.8%), four found partial effects (23.5%), and three found no effects (17.6%). Foci included general perceptions of biases; adversarial allegiance; bias blind spot; hindsight and confirmation biases; moral disengagement; primacy and recency effects; interview suggestibility; and cross-cultural, racial, and gender biases. Fewer studies focused on debiasing. The broad decision science field, as well as the specific forensic field, need more work on how to debias judgments.

Perspectives

We hope our model helps in the design and testing of new, effective debiasing strategies.

Tess M.S. Neal
Iowa State University

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: A general model of cognitive bias in human judgment and systematic review specific to forensic mental health., Law and Human Behavior, April 2022, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/lhb0000482.
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