Brain Bait: Effects of Neuroscience Evidence on Cognitive Biases in Legal Decision-Making

Abstract

Cognitive biases in fairness-based decision-making have been explored with controlled studies in neuroscience, psychology, social science, and economics. In particular, some results suggest an over-persuasive effect to neuroscience evidence and neuroimages in simulated legal contexts—subsequently, scholars and researchers have contested how valid this "seductive allure of neuroscience" truly is. However, these fundamental decision-making processes have not been evaluated in the actual body of case resolutions resulting from a legal system that is more complex and critical than any clinical study. This paper shows that statistical analyses of trials from the database Lex Machina support the hypothesis that neuroscience evidence significantly affects case outcomes, while finding that the use of fMRI neuroimages does not have additional effects. These findings have resounding social and legal implications: the current legal system may allow for cognitive biases in patent and criminal cases, and different industries have gone to extremes in integrating decision-making findings into practice. Potential neural models for biased fairness-based decision-making are analyzed in addendum.