IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tse/iastwp/31020.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mood and the Malleability of Moral Reasoning: The Impact of Irrelevant Factors on Judicial Decisions

Author

Listed:
  • Chen, Daniel L.
  • Loecher, Markus

Abstract

We detect intra-judge variation spanning three decades in 1.5 million judicial decisions driven by factors unrelated to case merits. U.S. immigration judges deny an additional 1.4% of asylum petitions–and U.S. district judges assign 0.6% longer prison sentences and 5% shorter probation sentences—on the day after their city’s NFL team lost. Bad weather has a similar effect as a team loss. Unrepresented parties in asylum bear the brunt of NFL effects, and the effect on district judges appears larger for those likely to be following the NFL team. We employ double residualization for a “causal” importance score.

Suggested Citation

  • Chen, Daniel L. & Loecher, Markus, 2016. "Mood and the Malleability of Moral Reasoning: The Impact of Irrelevant Factors on Judicial Decisions," IAST Working Papers 16-49, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), revised Sep 2019.
  • Handle: RePEc:tse:iastwp:31020
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://iast.fr/pub/31020
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: http://users.nber.org/~dlchen/papers/Mood_and_the_Malleability_of_Moral_Reasoning.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chen, Daniel L., 2016. "Priming Ideology: Why Presidential Elections Affect U.S. Judges," TSE Working Papers 16-681, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Aug 2016.
    2. Loewenstein, George & Ubel, Peter A., 2008. "Hedonic adaptation and the role of decision and experience utility in public policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(8-9), pages 1795-1810, August.
    3. Chen, Daniel L. & Prescott, J.J., 2016. "Implicit Egoism in Sentencing Decisions: First Letter Name Effects with Randomly Assigned Defendants," TSE Working Papers 16-726, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    4. Samuel M. Hartzmark & David H. Solomon, 2012. "Efficiency and the Disposition Effect in NFL Prediction Markets," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 2(03), pages 1-42.
    5. A. Colin Cameron & Jonah B. Gelbach & Douglas L. Miller, 2011. "Robust Inference With Multiway Clustering," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(2), pages 238-249, April.
    6. Andrew Caplin & John Leahy, 2001. "Psychological Expected Utility Theory and Anticipatory Feelings," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 55-79.
    7. Jeff Strnad, 2007. "Should Legal Empiricists Go Bayesian?," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 9(1), pages 195-303.
    8. David Card & Gordon B. Dahl, 2011. "Family Violence and Football: The Effect of Unexpected Emotional Cues on Violent Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(1), pages 103-143.
    9. Uri Simonsohn, 2010. "Weather To Go To College," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(543), pages 270-280, March.
    10. Ozkan Eren & Naci Mocan, 2018. "Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 171-205, July.
    11. Chen, Daniel L. & Moskowitz, Tobias J. & Shue, Kelly, 2016. "Decision-Making Under the Gambler’s Fallacy: Evidence From Asylum Courts, Loan Officers, and Baseball Umpires," IAST Working Papers 16-43, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    12. Anna Bassi & Riccardo Colacito & Paolo Fulghieri, 2013. "'O Sole Mio: An Experimental Analysis of Weather and Risk Attitudes in Financial Decisions," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(7), pages 1824-1852.
    13. Marie Connolly, 2013. "Some Like It Mild and Not Too Wet: The Influence of Weather on Subjective Well-Being," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 457-473, April.
    14. Carlos Berdejó & Daniel L. Chen, 2017. "Electoral Cycles among US Courts of Appeals Judges," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(3), pages 479-496.
    15. Alex Edmans & Diego García & Øyvind Norli, 2007. "Sports Sentiment and Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(4), pages 1967-1998, August.
    16. Daniel L. Chen & Tobias J. Moskowitz & Kelly Shue, 2016. "Decision Making Under the Gambler’s Fallacy: Evidence from Asylum Judges, Loan Officers, and Baseball Umpires," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(3), pages 1181-1242.
    17. Ozkan Eren & Naci Mocan, 2016. "Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles," Working Papers id:11299, eSocialSciences.
    18. Alberto Abadie & Guido W. Imbens, 2006. "Large Sample Properties of Matching Estimators for Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(1), pages 235-267, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chen, Daniel L., 2016. "Mood and the Malleability of Moral Reasoning," TSE Working Papers 16-707, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Feb 2017.
    2. Chen, Daniel L. & Prescott, J.J., 2016. "Implicit Egoism in Sentencing Decisions: First Letter Name Effects with Randomly Assigned Defendants," IAST Working Papers 16-56, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    3. Chen, Daniel L., 2016. "Priming Ideology: Why Presidential Elections Affect U.S. Judges," TSE Working Papers 16-681, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Aug 2016.
    4. Meier, Armando N. & Schmid, Lukas & Stutzer, Alois, 2019. "Rain, emotions and voting for the status quo," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 434-451.
    5. Daniel L. Chen & Markus Loecher, 2022. "Mood and the Malleability of Moral Reasoning: The Impact of Irrelevant Factors on Judicial Decisions," Working Papers hal-03864854, HAL.
    6. Chen, Daniel L. & Reinhart, Eric, 2016. "The Disavowal of Decisionism: Politically Motivated Exits from the U.S. Courts of Appeals," TSE Working Papers 16-721, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Feb 2017.
    7. Chen, Daniel L. & Philippe, Arnaud, 2023. "Clash of norms judicial leniency on defendant birthdays," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 324-344.
    8. Carlos Berdejó & Daniel L. Chen, 2017. "Electoral Cycles among US Courts of Appeals Judges," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(3), pages 479-496.
    9. Giulietti, Corrado & Tonin, Mirco & Vlassopoulos, Michael, 2020. "When the market drives you crazy: Stock market returns and fatal car accidents," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    10. Chen, Daniel L. & Philippe, Arnaud, 2018. "Clash of norms: Judicial leniency on defendant birthdays," IAST Working Papers 18-76, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    11. Chen, Daniel L., 2018. "Machine Learning and the Rule of Law," TSE Working Papers 18-975, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    12. Samahita, Margaret & Holm, Håkan J., 2020. "Mining for Mood Effect in the Field," Working Papers 2020:2, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    13. repec:jdm:journl:v:17:y:2022:i:6:p:1176-1207 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. repec:cup:judgdm:v:17:y:2022:i:6:p:1176-1207 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Chen, Daniel L. & Halberstam, Yosh & Yu, Alan, 2016. "Covering: Mutable Characteristics and Perceptions of (Masculine) Voice in the U.S. Supreme Court," IAST Working Papers 16-38, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), revised Feb 2020.
    16. Ramos Maqueda,Manuel & Chen,Daniel Li, 2021. "The Role of Justice in Development : The Data Revolution," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9720, The World Bank.
    17. Gagnon-Bartsch, Tristan & Bushong, Benjamin, 2022. "Learning with misattribution of reference dependence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    18. Fabrizio Bernardi & Marco Cozzani, 2021. "Soccer Scores, Short-Term Mood and Fertility," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 37(3), pages 625-641, July.
    19. Beland, Louis-Philippe & Brent, Daniel A., 2018. "Traffic and crime," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 96-116.
    20. Demir, Ender & Ersan, Oguz & Popesko, Boris, 2022. "Are Fan Tokens Fan Tokens?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 47(PB).
    21. Chen, Daniel L., 2023. "Judicial compliance in district courts," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    22. Shroff, Ravi & Vamvourellis, Konstantinos, 2022. "Pretrial release judgments and decision fatigue," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 117579, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tse:iastwp:31020. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iasttfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.