The Effect of Temporal Discounting on Mock Plea Bargain Decision Making
Faculty Advisor Name
Bernice Marcopulos, PhD, ABPP
Department
Department of Graduate Psychology
Description
An overwhelming majority of criminal cases in the United States utilize plea bargaining (90-95%), which is an agreement between a criminal defendant and a prosecuting attorney where the defendant agrees to plead guilty to one or more charges to reduce or drop other charges. The decision to accept a plea bargain lies solely on a defendant’s shoulders, and therefore a defendant’s ability to make competent choices regarding a plea bargain is important. Critics of the plea bargaining system have stated that it is manipulative and coercive towards defendants, as they are pushed to accept plea bargain offers by both the defense and the prosecution. However, defendant decision making in plea bargaining is not sufficiently prevalent in plea bargaining or decision making literature. While a few factors such as strength of evidence and attorney recommendation have been explored in defendant plea bargain decision making, the same cannot be said of several cognitive biases that have been shown to effect decision making in defendants. The current study explores the role of one such bias, temporal discounting, on defendant decision making in plea bargaining. Temporal discounting is defined as the tendency for individuals to favor distal, or further, outcomes rather than proximal, or closer, outcomes. This can be translated to plea bargaining by inferring that defendants will be more inclined to accept a plea bargain when the consequence is proximal rather than distal. Participants (adults residing in the U.S.) were presented with a vignette that details a plea bargaining scenario. The vignettes manipulated temporal discounting by varying whether accepting the plea bargain resulted in a distal or proximal consequence: 100 hours of community service beginning either immediately or delayed. Prior to reading the vignette, participants were presented with a brief passage explaining plea bargaining and were be asked to answer five multiple-choice style questions to ensure they had sufficient knowledge of the plea bargaining system. After reading the vignette, the participants were asked whether they would accept the plea bargain or not. A chi-square test of independence was conducted to determine if there was a statistically significant relationship between the two variables. The chi-square results indicate that there is a significant association between temporal discounting and plea bargain decision making, χ2 (1) = 4.583, p = .032, Cramer’s V = .124; Proximal consequences did result in a higher rate of plea bargain acceptances than distal consequences, even when the severity of punishment was held constant. Results from this study can be used to inform attorneys and other courtroom actors in how to frame plea bargain offers, in order to reduce manipulation of defendants.
The Effect of Temporal Discounting on Mock Plea Bargain Decision Making
An overwhelming majority of criminal cases in the United States utilize plea bargaining (90-95%), which is an agreement between a criminal defendant and a prosecuting attorney where the defendant agrees to plead guilty to one or more charges to reduce or drop other charges. The decision to accept a plea bargain lies solely on a defendant’s shoulders, and therefore a defendant’s ability to make competent choices regarding a plea bargain is important. Critics of the plea bargaining system have stated that it is manipulative and coercive towards defendants, as they are pushed to accept plea bargain offers by both the defense and the prosecution. However, defendant decision making in plea bargaining is not sufficiently prevalent in plea bargaining or decision making literature. While a few factors such as strength of evidence and attorney recommendation have been explored in defendant plea bargain decision making, the same cannot be said of several cognitive biases that have been shown to effect decision making in defendants. The current study explores the role of one such bias, temporal discounting, on defendant decision making in plea bargaining. Temporal discounting is defined as the tendency for individuals to favor distal, or further, outcomes rather than proximal, or closer, outcomes. This can be translated to plea bargaining by inferring that defendants will be more inclined to accept a plea bargain when the consequence is proximal rather than distal. Participants (adults residing in the U.S.) were presented with a vignette that details a plea bargaining scenario. The vignettes manipulated temporal discounting by varying whether accepting the plea bargain resulted in a distal or proximal consequence: 100 hours of community service beginning either immediately or delayed. Prior to reading the vignette, participants were presented with a brief passage explaining plea bargaining and were be asked to answer five multiple-choice style questions to ensure they had sufficient knowledge of the plea bargaining system. After reading the vignette, the participants were asked whether they would accept the plea bargain or not. A chi-square test of independence was conducted to determine if there was a statistically significant relationship between the two variables. The chi-square results indicate that there is a significant association between temporal discounting and plea bargain decision making, χ2 (1) = 4.583, p = .032, Cramer’s V = .124; Proximal consequences did result in a higher rate of plea bargain acceptances than distal consequences, even when the severity of punishment was held constant. Results from this study can be used to inform attorneys and other courtroom actors in how to frame plea bargain offers, in order to reduce manipulation of defendants.
