title: Forecasting trial outcomes: lawyers assign higher probability to possibilities that are described in greater detail.
abstract: The study of judgment under uncertainty has revealed that people judge the probability of an event to be higher when the event is described as a disjunction of constituent events or when they judge constituent events separately. These observations have motivated the development of support theory (Y. Rottenstreich & A. Tversky, 1997; A. Tversky & D. J. Koehler, 1994), a descriptive model of judgment under uncertainty. The major predictions of support theory are that (1) the judged probabilities of complementary events sum to 1; (2) the judged probabilities of n > 2 exclusive and exhaustive events generally sum to more than 1; and (3) the judged probability of an event generally increases when it is described as a disjunction of specific possibilities. We test these predictions in 6 studies of experienced attorneys who judged the likelihood of particular trial outcomes or were asked to offer advice on whether or not to accept a settlement offer. The results demonstrate that attorneys are indeed susceptible to bias in forecasting trial outcomes, consistent with support theory.
authors: Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708, USA. cfox@mail.duke.edu
authors: Craig R
authors: CR
authors: Fox
authors: Richard
authors: R
authors: Birke
mesh_terms: D005544:Forecasting / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007603:Jurisprudence; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011336:Probability; D014481:United States