Those who teach in (as well as, frankly, attend) law schools may find a recent paper by Holger Spamann (Harvard) interesting. In Lawyers' Role-Induced Bias Arises Fast and Persists Despite Intervention, Spamann presents results from his experiment with Harvard Law students testing for evidence of role-induced bias and the efficacy of de-biasing efforts.
The experiment draws on students in "the basic class on corporations/business organizations taught by the same instructor with identical materials at two top ten U.S. law schools in six of the seven semesters from spring 2016 through spring 2019.” Class enrollments (N) ranged from 43 to 104. “The purpose of the exercise is to engage students in a cutting-edge topic of insider trading law, while hopefully demonstrating to students the existence of own-side bias through a post-survey review of their debriefing survey.” A summary of the paper's key findings follows.
“Lawyers’ role-induced bias arises fast and persists despite a simple intervention, at least in an experiment with law students. After only 40 minutes or less of engagement with a case, law students exhibit substantial role-induced bias towards the side they have been randomly assigned to represent in the classroom. Of students randomly assigned to represent petitioner or respondent in a mock Supreme Court oral argument of U.S. v. Newman , over 50% of those assigned petitioner’s counsel’s role predicted petitioner victory, as opposed to less than 20% of those assigned respondent’s counsel’s role, with randomly assigned justices in the middle. These differences in prediction were actually starker when the role assignment was performed a mere 30 minutes before the 10-minute mock argument than when the assignment was performed five days prior, before the students ever started reading about the relevant law. Reminding students before making their prediction that their role in the oral argument had been “that of an advocate, whereas we are now stepping back out and […] asking your opinion as a neutral, sober observer” has no detectable effect on their biased predictions.” Moreover, similar to earlier research, “the bias occurs almost evenly in male and female participants, who also report equal confidence in their predictions.”
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