Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.5, 2014

The Effect of Degree of Cognitive Fluency on Judicial Verdicts

(Abstract)

Li Xueyao, Ge Yan and He Juntao

Psychological/physiological evidence shows that degree of cognitive processing fluency influences judgments or assessments—a high degree of fluency tends to elicit a positive judgment and a low degree of fluency tends to elicit a negative judgment. Using university students and judges as experimental subjects, our research found that a similar effect exists with judicial verdicts—a higher degree of fluency brings a lighter sentence, while a lower degree of fluency produces a heavier one. Our research also found that external competition incentives and occupational background function to regulate such influences. Compared with the students, the judges we tested showed a greater ability to withstand the effect of changes in the degree of fluency, but when fluency was very low and its effect was influenced by competition incentives, the test subject judges could also give a harsher sentence.