The Bias You Didn't Expect

Hypothesis: people eat a poor diet because their decision-making ability is most impaired right at the point where they are deciding what to eat next.

they grant about 65% after meal breaks, and about 10% right before breaks and at the end of the day

While the idea that judges are more lenient shortly after eating is plausible, this effect size does not pass sanity checking. I would like to see this reproduced. The judgments to be made should break down into some one-sided decisions and some borderline decisions, but these numbers imply not only that one-sided decisions are uncommon, but also that borderline decisions aren't influenced much by other things like the eloquence of the lawyers.

I don't know about Israel, but I do know that in American courts, cases are not heard in random order on a given day. It's very common that simple, quick matters are put first so that the attorneys can get out fast.

Presumably, a parole application is either contested by the prosecutor's office or uncontested. If it's uncontested, it's probably pretty quick. Just some perfunctory testimony from the convict and perhaps from the parole services office, a few questions from the judge, and that's that.

On the other hand, if the parole application is contested, one can expect more in the way of witnesses, cross-examination, and so forth.

It would be natural to put the contested applications towards the end of the morning and afternoon sessions.

Anyway, I am just speculating here. But it does seem suspicious that timing alone could make such a dramatic difference unless some other factor is at work.

Beware the sometimes subtle trap of thinking that, since you have thought about a big decision/belief at seemingly random intervals for a whole week (month, year) now, you have perspective on the decision/belief from a representative variety of your states of mind. State-dependent memory, habits, priming &c. make this unlikely unless you were deliberately making an effort.

If you seriously believe that the majority of Americans believe that judges are relatively unbiased, you need to spend some time with a lower class of people. And I'm not talking about middle class white kids pretending to be rebels.

EVERY convict I know (with one exception, and I'm not sure about him, it's been 20 years since he was in jail) and everyone who has ever tried to argue a child custody case, lost a small claims case, or whatever thought the judge was personally and malevolently biased against them for all sorts of reasons ranging from their haircut to the phase of the moon.

It's really only the upper middle class and the rich who think that judges are mostly unbiased, although many do think it's for racial or cultural reasons, most of them just don't want to admit that they are guilty.

In another vein, most of us DO think about "big" questions at different times, this is why they are "big" questions--we don't wake up in the morning and in between the time we finish grinding the beans and taking the first drink of coffee decide to quit or job designing and printing t-shirts for underground punk bands, drop back into school and get a masters in business management and go work for a Management Consulting company.

It's the important decisions that you can't put off (direct pressure, quick clot or tourniquet?) that you have to make RIGHT FUCKING NOW that you often have to make cold, wet, tired and hungry. And no, you're not at your best.

You are right that we need to be aware of how various factors impact our cognition. I get really fucking grumpy. Ok, grumpier when I'm fasting. Or when I'm tired. I get MUCH less tolerant of stupidity or ignorance (which is bad when dealing with a precocious 4 year old). I've had to work on complex problems when really tired, and I know (or at least I think I do) where my limits are. These days I live well inside them just in case.

I also keep some GU in my bag, or an energy bar or some sort in my backpack at all times. Because it helps.

The Bias You Didn't Expect

There's only one?

I have observed and used a similar effect in myself. I do my most difficult studying right after eating, then use the long, almost flat plateau afterwards for studying or decision making that requires a high degree of sustained concentration, and try to use the tail for routine chores and R&R. The food doesn't make a lot of difference, the peak seems slightly higher after a high carb snack, but the same effect was present and only a bit weaker when I was eating an almost zero-carb (meat only) diet. Though a sudden change in diet can create unusual effects; for example a really high fiber meal (bean soup) can have unpredictable effects when I haven't been eating a lot of fiber recently.

..there is a rather cynical discipline called legal realism that says the law is really based on quirks of individual psychology, "what the judge had for breakfast,"...

In common law countries, sentencing decisions are made by trial judges. But the decisions of trial judges don't count as "precedent," and therefore are not "the law." Case law -- binding precedent -- is made up of the published decisions of appeals courts. Trial judges often have to make their decisions in real time, right there at the trial in front of everyone. Appellate judges mostly read written briefs, have their staffs make preliminary recommendations, think about it awhile, put it aside to sleep on the matter, have their clerks write rough drafts, make edits, and consult with their colleagues before they have to issue an opinion. Binding decisions are made by majority vote. This should compensate for a lot of the randomness implied by the Israeli study.

This does not negate the main point about the "bias you didn't expect." But there are means to mitigate the damage done by grouchy trial judges.

I apparently can't access the article at all (I can't see any links for athens/shibboleth), so I can't tell, but does the paper make it clear that the scheduling of cases is purely at random? That could have a huge effect on bias, as could other factors such as which lawyers are around for which cases excetera.

In addition of course, this is a nonrandom sample of some judges in Isreal. Generalising to assume that one will make different decisions on important cases depending on when one has eaten is probably not a good idea. That said, its probably worth thinking about at least if your decision is important, but thats actually probably more to do if one is in a good/bad mood.

Or were judges being too nice? We know there was bias, but we still don't know when bias occurred.

I feel the need to point out that the observation does not necessarily result in a bias. We literally know nothing about the legal system's arrangments for parolees here other than this single data point.

It could be, for example, that there is an understanding that the review boards arrange cases before judges based on the boards' estimate of the potential parolee's worthiness of release; with the 'worst offenders' being later in a giving hearing bracket. This would also take the shape of a linear decline in parole-granting rates -- but would not represent any bias in the judge's reasoning.

(In case this is not clear, as I appear to sometimes have difficulty communicating with others on this site: My only positional claim here is that we do not know if this is actually a bias at all, as we have too little data to make such a definitive statement. All else is merely explanation of this stance.)

Since I first read about this study, I have tried to move requests I make of strangers and authority figures to 1 PM when possible. Unfortunately I have not collected enough data to tell how effective this is.

The Economist reported on the Israeli study too:

http://www.economist.com/node/18557594

The article makes an argument which I find persuasive: that it's not about food as much as it's about difficult decisions tiring the brain. When the brain is tired, it resorts to the easy and safe option.

Check out the Economist article for more.

It turns out that legal realism is totally wrong. It's not what the judge had for breakfast. It's how recently the judge had breakfast.

Was that part of the study? Did they collect information about what the judges consumed for their meal? If it is, in fact, the meal that is important and not time since having a break then it would be somewhat surprising if what they ate was not an important factor. A meal higher in protein and fat has a nutritional impact over a far larger time period than a meal high in refined carbohydrates.

Just a side note: there is growing consensus in the neuroscience community that certain activity, foremost among them self-control (rational control of emotions, inhibitive projections from the prefrontal cortex downward), are highly dependent on the blood glucose level.

In other words, you don't eat, your blood glucose goes down, you are less able to be unbiased and detached. Also, it would seem, the short memory suffers, so you are able to keep fewer things in mind for parallel consideration. All of this adds up to an increase in irritability, more impulsive decision making, and less willingness to take complexities into account.

There are many good overviews of the data. If you wish to read more, googling "blood glucose level self control" produces several good popular takes on the first page.

For particularly important decisions, consider contemplating them at different times, if you can. Think about one thing Monday morning, then Wednesday afternoon, then Saturday evening, going only to the point of getting an overall feel for an answer, and not to the point of really making a solid conclusion.

This seems congruent with the folk idea of "sleeping on" difficult or particularly important decisions rather than coming to a decision on the spot, and with the legal practice of having "cooling off periods" after a purchase is made or a contract is signed, during which one party can void the agreement.

FYI, free: http://lsolum.typepad.com/files/danziger-levav-avnaim-pnas-2011.pdf

It strikes me that all the really effective ways of combating subjective bias involve bringing in groups of people, whether it is democratic votes, the communitarianism of science, or juries. It looks like having a single judge deciding a sentence is a loophole to be plugged.

That's a huge and horrific example of bias. Upvoted.

We know there was bias, but we still don't know when bias occurred.

There's a possibility that there is no time when bias did not occur. It's possible that the bias merely changed form throughout time, and never altered its level of influence.