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By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: At the voir dire stage of a jury trial, the word “bias” gets used a lot. But do we really know what it means? The courts, in practice at least, hew to a simple meaning: If a potential juror admits to bias, that means they know they can’t be fair
See the Social Roots of Bias Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: So Donald Trump now has the coronavirus. As of press time for this blog post, he is fighting the illness from the Presidential Suite at Walter Reed Medical Center. It is news that struck many as both surprising and predictable: Surprising in the way that it has upended a campaign
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: “You would agree with me, wouldn’t you doctor, that a physician should never needlessly endanger his patient, right?” That is a recommended question, probably the main recommended question to plaintiff attorneys who are applying the Reptile approach to persuasion. At first, it sounds like the answer would be an easy “Yes,” or
The Reptile Question: Give a Good Answer Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Take a moment and visualize what your next in-person jury trial might look like. The jurors arrive at the courthouse and have their temperature checked while being asked whether they or anyone in their household have been coughing, sneezing, running a fever, or showing any other symptom of COVID-19. They
Prime Your Jurors on the Pandemic, Make Them More Conservative Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Defendants in many areas of litigation are likely familiar at this point with the Reptile approach to trying plaintiffs’ cases. A central pillar of the strategy, and its namesake, is the idea that personally-relevant fear appeals can be wielded in order to awaken the primitive, or ‘reptile,’ regions of the
Consider This Version of the Reptile: It’s Not Fear, It’s Anger Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Social scientists who study political orientation are realizing that it is something more than discrete attitudes about issues or candidates. Research shows that one’s identification as “liberal” or “conservative” also has to do with brain wiring. For example, some studies have found that conservatives tend to be more motivated by fear
Address Fearful Conservatives and Angry Liberals Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: The Reptile approach to trying plaintiffs’ cases has been around for a decade. It is now expected that many of those seeking damages in products, medical liability, and other personal injury cases, will use a persuasive approach that attempts to awaken jurors’ reptilian fear response and instinct to protect the
Careful Defendants, the ‘Reverse Reptile’ Could Be a Boomerang Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: I have had a long-running interest in Don Keenan and David Ball’s perspective on plaintiffs’ trial and discovery advocacy called “The Reptile,” the notion that one can motivate jurors to side with a plaintiff by tapping into the tendency of the primordial reptile brain to flee from threats and gravitate
Be Craftier than the Snake: Observations from DRI’s 2018 ‘Reptile’ Seminar Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Let’s consider the life cycle of the Reptile — not the slithering, cold-blooded animal, but the strategic approach to arguing plaintiffs’ cases advocated by David Ball and Don Keenan. That perspective, trying to win by appealing to the fear response of the “reptile brain,” is thought of as a trial strategy. Defense
The Plaintiff Is a Reptile, so Turn Your Witness into a Mongoose Read More »