The Effect of Locus of Control on Hindsight Bias in Mock Judges’ Decision-making

PENG Wei-Wei

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2012, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (2) : 498-502.

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The experiment adopted the between-subjects design with twain factors—locus of control (internal locus of control and external locus of control) and debiasing group (hindsight bias group, alternative group and instructing group). 90 senior undergraduates majoring in Law were selected by the Rotter’s internal—external locus of control scale, averaging 45 internal locus of control type and 45 external locus of control type. The study aimed at investigating the difference of hindsight bias in mock judges’ decision-making with homemade questionaries of two different legal cases. The participants made the legal decision in two law cases respectively. The experiment results showed that the hindsight bias also existed in mock judges’ decision-making, and different locus of control was the influencing factor which led to the difference of hindsight bias in mock judges’ decision-making. Composed to mock judges with external locus of control, more mock judges with internal locus of control made the legal decision to judge the fault of the defendants’ actions in two legal cases, which caused greater hindsight bias appeared. Meanwhile, in a certain extent, because of the admonition from the experimenter and interrupting participants anchoring from the outcome knowledge that was the special instruction, as well as considering the alternative results and analyzing their negative influence on the parties could reduce the hindsight bias of the mock judges in legal decision-making effectively. Debiasing strategies and locus of control affected hindsight bias significantly in the first and second legal cases, however, in both legal cases, the interaction between strategies and locus of control was not prominent. Applying which debiasing strategy was more effective pointing to the internal or external locus of control, there was a tendency, but no significant difference, which might attribute that the limited number of subjects could not reflect the integral effect of debiasing strategies on the different locus of control. That would need further experimental studies to prove in the future. The locus of control and debiasing strategies had their significant influence on hindsight bias in mock judges’ decision-making.

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judges’decision-making / hindsight bias / locus of control / debiasing strategy

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The Effect of Locus of Control on Hindsight Bias in Mock Judges’ Decision-making[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2012, 35(2): 498-502

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