Pretrial release judgments and decision fatigue
Field studies in many domains have found evidence of decision fatigue, a phenomenon describing how decision quality can be impaired by the act of making previous decisions. Debate remains, however, over posited psychological mechanisms underlying decision fatigue, and the size of effects in high-sta...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Cambridge University Press
2022-11-01
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| Series: | Judgment and Decision Making |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1930297500009384/type/journal_article |
| _version_ | 1797696322311028736 |
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| author | Ravi Shroff Konstantinos Vamvourellis |
| author_facet | Ravi Shroff Konstantinos Vamvourellis |
| author_sort | Ravi Shroff |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Field studies in many domains have found evidence of decision fatigue, a phenomenon describing how decision quality can be impaired by the act of making previous decisions. Debate remains, however, over posited psychological mechanisms underlying decision fatigue, and the size of effects in high-stakes settings. We examine an extensive set of pretrial arraignments in a large, urban court system to investigate how judicial release and bail decisions are influenced by the time an arraignment occurs. We find that release rates decline modestly in the hours before lunch and before dinner, and these declines persist after statistically adjusting for an extensive set of observed covariates. However, we find no evidence that arraignment time affects pretrial release rates in the remainder of each decision-making session. Moreover, we find that release rates remain unchanged after a meal break even though judges have the opportunity to replenish their mental and physical resources by resting and eating. In a complementary analysis, we find that the rate at which judges concur with prosecutorial bail requests does not appear to be influenced by either arraignment time or a meal break. Taken together, our results imply that to the extent that decision fatigue plays a role in pretrial release judgments, effects are small and inconsistent with previous explanations implicating psychological depletion processes. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T03:24:42Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-18aa8bae2ce346c8b5dd6d5fa23f309c |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1930-2975 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T03:24:42Z |
| publishDate | 2022-11-01 |
| publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Judgment and Decision Making |
| spelling | doaj.art-18aa8bae2ce346c8b5dd6d5fa23f309c2023-09-03T13:42:58ZengCambridge University PressJudgment and Decision Making1930-29752022-11-01171176120710.1017/S1930297500009384Pretrial release judgments and decision fatigueRavi Shroff0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3783-9630Konstantinos Vamvourellis1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7355-6865Department of Applied Statistics, Social Science, and Humanities, New York UniversityDepartment of Statistics, London School of EconomicsField studies in many domains have found evidence of decision fatigue, a phenomenon describing how decision quality can be impaired by the act of making previous decisions. Debate remains, however, over posited psychological mechanisms underlying decision fatigue, and the size of effects in high-stakes settings. We examine an extensive set of pretrial arraignments in a large, urban court system to investigate how judicial release and bail decisions are influenced by the time an arraignment occurs. We find that release rates decline modestly in the hours before lunch and before dinner, and these declines persist after statistically adjusting for an extensive set of observed covariates. However, we find no evidence that arraignment time affects pretrial release rates in the remainder of each decision-making session. Moreover, we find that release rates remain unchanged after a meal break even though judges have the opportunity to replenish their mental and physical resources by resting and eating. In a complementary analysis, we find that the rate at which judges concur with prosecutorial bail requests does not appear to be influenced by either arraignment time or a meal break. Taken together, our results imply that to the extent that decision fatigue plays a role in pretrial release judgments, effects are small and inconsistent with previous explanations implicating psychological depletion processes.https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1930297500009384/type/journal_articlejudicial decision makingdecision fatiguemental depletionpretrial detention |
| spellingShingle | Ravi Shroff Konstantinos Vamvourellis Pretrial release judgments and decision fatigue Judgment and Decision Making judicial decision making decision fatigue mental depletion pretrial detention |
| title | Pretrial release judgments and decision fatigue |
| title_full | Pretrial release judgments and decision fatigue |
| title_fullStr | Pretrial release judgments and decision fatigue |
| title_full_unstemmed | Pretrial release judgments and decision fatigue |
| title_short | Pretrial release judgments and decision fatigue |
| title_sort | pretrial release judgments and decision fatigue |
| topic | judicial decision making decision fatigue mental depletion pretrial detention |
| url | https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1930297500009384/type/journal_article |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT ravishroff pretrialreleasejudgmentsanddecisionfatigue AT konstantinosvamvourellis pretrialreleasejudgmentsanddecisionfatigue |