Previous studies of judgment and decision-making in adjudication have largely focused on juries and judges. This body of work demonstrated that legal training and professional experience sometimes affect attitudes and mitigate the susceptibility to cognitive biases, but often they do not. Relatively few experimental studies examined the decisions of prosecutors and defense lawyers, although they play a major role, especially in legal systems where prosecutors have a broad discretion in charging decisions, courts' discretion regarding sentencing is constrained, and plea bargains abound. This study directly compares laypersons, law students, and legal practitioners—including prosecutors and defense lawyers—in terms of their attitudes about the criminal justice system and their cognitive biases. It was found that the outcome bias and the anti-inference bias influenced all groups similarly, but an irrelevant anchor only impacted the decisions of laypersons and law students, and not those of legal professionals. Prosecutors were significantly more inclined to judge a behavior as negligent and reach factual conclusions supporting a conviction. However, the hypothesis that the susceptibility of prosecutors and defense lawyers to cognitive biases would be affected by their role was not borne out. The article considers possible explanations for the reported findings, and discusses their policy implications.

中文翻译：

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法律决策中的偏见：检察官、辩护律师、法学院学生和外行人士的比较

以往对审判中的判断和决策的研究主要集中在陪审团和法官身上。这项工作表明，法律培训和专业经验有时会影响态度并减轻对认知偏见的敏感性，但通常不会。尽管检察官和辩护律师发挥着重要作用，但相对较少的实验研究检验了检察官和辩护律师的决定，特别是在检察官在指控决定上拥有广泛自由裁量权、法院在量刑方面的自由裁量权受到限制、辩诉交易比比皆是的法律体系中。这项研究直接比较了外行、法学院学生和法律从业者（包括检察官和辩护律师）对刑事司法系统的态度和认知偏见。结果发现，结果偏差和反推理偏差对所有群体的影响相似，但不相关的锚点只影响外行和法学院学生的决定，而不影响法律专业人士的决定。检察官明显更倾向于将某种行为判断为过失，并得出支持定罪的事实结论。然而，检察官和辩护律师对认知偏见的敏感性会因其角色而受到影响的假设并未得到证实。本文考虑了对报告结果的可能解释，并讨论了其政策含义。