The Fundamental Attribution Error and Accuracy: Judges vs Jurors

Abstract

As discussed in the previous Chapter, studies on the FAE had a prominent influence on tort law scholarship. Several authors have raised concerns that judges may systematically misattribute fault to the detriment of accuracy as well as lead to unwarranted developments of legal rules and practices. Despite this importance, existent empirical studies largely ignore whether expert adjudicators commit the FAE in trial settings.

This Chapter is partially a reproduction of the following article: Goran Dominioni, Peter Desmet, and Louis Visscher, 2020, Judges Versus Jurors: Biased Attributions in the Courtroom, 52:1 CORNELL INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL 102. I thank Maria Bigoni, Jeffrey Rachlinski, the participants to the 13th Conference on Empirical Legal Studies at Cornell Law School, to the IMPRS poster presentation at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, to the BACT Lunch Seminar at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and the Italian Society of Law and Economics 12th Annual Conference for useful discussion. I am also very grateful to Sara Mahmoud for invaluable organizational support.