Discussion of “Improving Jurors' Evaluations of Auditors in Negligence Cases”

Abstract

This article comments on a study that investigated the effect of bias on jurors' decisions on negligence cases involving auditors. Numerous studies have proposed and investigated potential strategies for mitigating those biases. The present study proposed a theoretical framework for the possible influence of knowledge of a negative outcome on the evaluative judgments of jurors in an auditor negligence trial. There could be problems with the applicability of the social psychology paradigm upon which the reasoning for the expectation of a negative outcome effect is based. It has been demonstrated in the social psychology literature that if an individual is feeling negative affect, that negative affect may become part of the information set used in making evaluative judgments. Even if negative affect is an explanatory variable for the outcome effect, whether it is a naturally occurring phenomenon in this setting is a different question. There was also a trade-off between external and internal validity. It is well known that individuals attribute differing degrees of reliability to various sources of evidence; thus, different jurors may impute differing degrees of credibility to different witnesses. This article comments on a study that investigated the effect of bias on jurors' decisions on negligence cases involving auditors. Numerous studies have proposed and investigated potential strategies for mitigating those biases. The present study proposed a theoretical framework for the possible influence of knowledge of a negative outcome on the evaluative judgments of jurors in an auditor negligence trial. There could be problems with the applicability of the social psychology paradigm upon which the reasoning for the expectation of a negative outcome effect is based. It has been demonstrated in the social psychology literature that if an individual is feeling negative affect, that negative affect may become part of the information set used in making evaluative judgments. Even if negative affect is an explanatory variable for the outcome effect, whether it is a naturally occurring phenomenon in this setting is a different question. There was also a trade-off between external and internal validity. It is well known that individuals attribute differing degrees of reliability to various sources of evidence; thus, different jurors may impute differing degrees of credibility to different witnesses.