When juries fail to comply with the law: Biased evidence processing in individual and group decision making

Two experiments examined individual and group decision making when decision criteria led to outcomes that violated distributive justice. In Experiment I, noncompliant individual jurors in a civil trial biased their determinations of negligence to award damages when the decision criteria prohibited an award. Experiment 2. replicated this effect at the group level and revealed that juries also biased their attributions of negligence to justify reducing damages when the decision criteria required an excessive award. In both cases of noncompliance, juries recruited a biased subset of information during deliberations that sustained their decisions. Finally, noncompliant juries were marked by the advent of a trigger person who raised justice concerns. Implications for other decision-making groups and for the courts are discussed.