An Exploration of Unpacking
Effects in Jury Decision Making
Nick Polavin & Zheng Joyce Wang, Ph.D.
Ohio State University
Non-Economic Damages
• Pain and suffering damages have no price tag
• Subjective values chosen
• These valuations vary greatly (Vidmar, 1994)
• Goal: Help jurors make more systematic decisions
Itemizing as Explanation
• Solution: Itemize the non-economic damages into sub-categories
• Reasoning: This will help jurors think about the reasons behind the
non-economic damages total
• Separating Loss of enjoyment of life from Pain and suffering
damages led to increased comprehension of instructions
– (Poser, Bornstein, and Kiernan, 2003)
Many States Do This
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Loss of enjoyment of life: _________
Mental suffering: _________
Physical pain: _________
Disfigurement: _________
• Increased awards
• Loss of enjoyment of life, mental suffering, physical pain, and
disfigurement: _________
• Rather than: Non-economic damages: _________
Unpacking
• Unpacked (perceived) probabilities have been tested extensively
– Chance of dying from a disease
• (Tversky & Koehler, 1994)
– Chance of who committed a murder
• (Rottenstreitch and Tversky, 1997)
– Chance of which team/league will win the NBA Championship
• (Fox & Tversky, 1998)
• Rottenstreitch & Tversky, 1997:
– Packed: Chance that person X was murdered: ______
– Unpacked:
• Chance that person X was murdered by an acquaintance: ______
• Chance that person X was murdered by an unknown person: ______
Support Theory
• More information about an event → higher perceived probability of it
occurring
– (Tversky & Koehler, 1994; Van Boven & Epley, 2003)
• For jury awards: As more dimensions of non-economic damages
are provided, jurors should be able to think of more reasons to
award money
• H1: Unpacked jury verdict forms will lead to higher valuations for
non-economic damages than the packed communication condition.
Implicit vs. Explicit
• Unpacking effect uses two different versions
– Implicit: Chance that person X was murdered by an acquaintance or
unknown person: ______
– Explicit:
• Chance that person X was murdered by an acquaintance: ______
• Chance that person X was murdered by an unknown person: ______
• Gregory & Winter (2011) claim that explicit unpacking gets jurors to
think differently than implicit unpacking
Typicality/Representativeness also matters
• There are instances where unpacked decisions lead to lower
judgments
• 3 typical instances
– “Judge the probability of someone dying of heart disease, cancer,
stroke, or any other disease.”
• 3 atypical instances
– “Judge the probability of someone dying of pneumonia, diabetes,
cirrhosis, or any other disease.”
Typicality
• As more sub-categories are added, there is a greater likelihood of
including atypical items
– (Sloman, et al., 2004)
• Atypical items take away attention from typical items
• Conclusion: Too many sub-categories may decrease judgments
Research Question
• Implicit vs. explicit unpacking
• Number of sub-categories
• RQ: How do different types of unpacked communication influence
non-economic damages?
Method
• Online experiment, N = 229 participants recruited from MTurk
– Mean age = 39.16
– 52% female
– 81.7% White, non-Hispanic, 8.7% Asian, 5.7% Black or African
American, 4.4% Hispanic/Latino, 0.9% American Indian or Alaskan
Native, 0.4% other
• Within-Subjects Condition
– 163 of the subjects were given unpacked jury verdict forms
– 20 minute distractor task
– Reminded of the case and then given packed jury verdict form
Method
• 5 between-subjects conditions
– Packed, 4 explicit unpacked, 10 explicit unpacked, 4 implicit unpacked,
10 implicit unpacked
• 1 category: Non-economic damages
• 4 categories: Loss of enjoyment of life, Disfigurement, Mental
suffering, and Physical pain
– Implicit and Explicit
• 10 categories: Loss of enjoyment of life, Disfigurement, Mental
suffering, Physical pain, Physical impairment, Inconvenience, Grief,
Anxiety, Humiliation, Emotional Distress
– Implicit and Explicit
Unpacking with Atypical Sub-categories
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•
•
•
•
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Loss of enjoyment of life: _________
Mental suffering: _________
Physical pain: _________
Disfigurement: _________
Physical impairment: _________
Emotional distress: _________
Inconvenience: _________
Grief: _________
Anxiety: _________
Humiliation: _________
1st Case
• Participants read a case
• A trucker hit a bicyclist as he was texting while driving
• Plaintiff requests $1,900,000
• Defense suggests $1,270,000
2nd Case
• Participants read a case
• The defendant (a doctor) told the plaintiff that he needed surgery for
an ulcer but did not discuss any of the risks with the defendant
• Plaintiff requests $850,000
• Defense suggests $220,000
Measures
• DV: Valuation - Money awarded to the plaintiff
• Control variables
– Empathy: Empathic concern subscale from the Interpersonal Reactivity
Index (IRI)
– Numeracy: Subjective numeracy
– Story
Results
• Within-Subjects
• H1: Unpacked jury verdict forms will have higher valuations of noneconomic damages than a packed version
• Unpacked jury verdict forms had higher valuations than packed jury
verdict forms
– F(1, 153) = 4.34, p < .05
Results
Money Awarded
4,000,000
3,500,000
3,000,000
2,500,000
2,000,000
1,500,000
1,000,000
500,000
0
Packed
Explicit-4
Explicit-10
Malpractice
Accident
Implicit-4
Implicit-10
Results
• Jury instruction condition affected the valuation
– F(4, 213) = 2.56, p < .05
• Packed condition was only lower than explicit-4 condition
– p < .005
• Explicit-4 generated higher awards than the other 3 unpacked
conditions
– All p’s < .005
• Other 3 unpacked conditions did not differ from each other
Discussion
• Explicit unpacking increases awards by getting jurors to think more
thoroughly about the sub-categories
• The inclusion of atypical sub-categories will bring down the overall
judgment
Study 2
• Two competing theories about why the inclusion of atypical items
lowers overall judgments
– Summation mechanism (Sloman, et al., 2004)
• Order will affect verdicts
– Averaging mechanism (Kahneman, 2011)
• Order will not affect verdicts
Method
• Online experiment, N = 234
• 4 sub-categories presented in an explicit unpacked version
• 2 conditions:
– Atypical sub-category presented first
– Atypical sub-category presented last
• Controlled for empathy, subjective numeracy, and story
Results & Discussion
• F(1, 230) = 1.70, p = .19
• No significant differences between the two conditions
• Jurors use an averaging mechanism
• Order of the sub-categories does not influence judgments
Thank you!
Nick Polavin – [email protected]
Zheng Joyce Wang – [email protected]