Reducing Sympathy Bias: The Impact of Statutory Interpretation Methods

This article examines the moderating effect of statutory interpretative methods on sympathy bias in legal decision-making. Previous research has shown that sympathy toward litigants can lead to biased decisions, particularly in cases of legal ambiguity. Two preregistered studies of 300 laypersons and 339 legal practitioners experimentally tested the effect of various interpretative methods on sympathy bias. The results reaffirm the existence of sympathy bias and demonstrate that participants are less swayed by sympathy when instructed to interpret the law by focusing on its plain meaning rather than the legislature’s intention or policy considerations. These findings suggest that a focus on the text of a legal rule can serve as a debiasing technique against sympathy bias. Interestingly, this moderating effect was not mediated by the effect of the interpretative method on the rule’s clarity or the decision’s predictability. The findings contribute to ongoing debates about judicial bias and statutory interpretation. To seek justice is to seek something free of bias. —Aristotle