By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – Judges, arbitrators, mediators: legally trained and neutral minds, without the juror’s baggage of selective perception, predisposition, and bias, right? Not really. In the previous two posts on motivated thinking and instrumental argument, I wrote that an audience’s reasoning and advocacy is driven by emotions and not just by logic. While a jury’s decision making […]
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – Lucy, for the umpteenth time, holds the football and invites Charlie Brown to kick it with the promise that this time, she won’t pull the ball at the last moment and send him flying. His response: “I don’t mind your dishonesty, half as much as I mind your opinion
Avoid Condescension and Other Sins of Legal Argument: Know Your ‘Second Persona’ Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – We all remember Aesop’s fable of the happy-go-lucky grasshopper who played away the summer while the ants worked industriously. When winter came, and the hungry grasshopper ended up at the ant’s door, the moral of the story became clear: entitlement, the feeling that the world owes you a living,
Spot the Jurors Who Feel Entitled to Award Higher Damages Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – So, let’s say you are BP, and after the Deepwater Horizon spill you are facing several thousand claims in the courtroom. You are potentially more worried by one big claim in the court of public opinion: you’re seen as a bad actor. That perception certainly has less to do with any causal analysis of the failure of
By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – Never heard of “Alpha” and “Omega” strategies for persuasion? Until recently, neither had I. But after reading the research, it has changed my way of looking at persuasion. The terms are based on something called the “approach-avoidance” model (Knowles & Linn, 2004), suggesting that to an audience, every position you
Persuade Using Both Alpha and Omega Strategies Read More »
By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – When I heard that the world would be ending on May 21, 2011, I knew that I would be set either way: If the world didn’t end, I would have a good blog topic, and if it did, well then, no more worrying about blog topics. So, here we are,
Be Relatively Cautious With Absolutist Jurors Read More »
By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – Exactly what do people celebrate when they see a fitting result? Sometimes it is justice, and sometimes it includes a measure of payback or revenge as well. Just over a week ago, news from the Oval Office ignited jubilant celebrations in Times Square and many other parts of the country. Scenes
A Mixture of Justice and Revenge: Target Juror Psychology in Awarding Damages Read More »
By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – There is a pattern in medical malpractice litigation: people want to trust their doctors. This pattern is something observed in our own experience, in human psychology, and in attitudes toward malpractice trials. Plaintiffs only win when jurors are able to overcome that trust. The best thing that doctor-defendants have
In Malpractice Litigation, Account for Jurors’ Motive to Trust the Doctor Read More »
By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – Those who count on the human ability to prioritize reason and evidence over unshakable conviction — and all participants in the litigation process ought to count themselves in that group — should take note of the persistence of questions over the President’s place of birth, and the sad take-away
Convert Your Conspiracy Theorists: Research Shows it Can Be Done Read More »
By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – Last week, in part one of this post, I wrote about the increasing tendency for jurors to express irritation and insecurity at the prospect of serving out their jury duty, a greater proportion of hardship claims, and some recent research showing that the resulting changes in the jury pool could lead to