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Belief Bias Vs Confirmation Bias

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Gurleen Sekhon Essay Submission Number Two Many individuals trust in their reasoning to insist in making logical and justified decisions. In court cases; however, individual reasoning can be less logical or justified due to belief bias and confirmation bias. These two patterns, belief bias and confirmation bias, affects every individuals’ abilities to adapt and alter their beliefs according to newly acquired knowledge and face evidence. These patterns state that we tend to accept evidence or information that confirms what we already know. More specifically, belief bias is accepting an outcome if it conforms to what we believe to be true. Confirmation bias, on the other hand, is accepting evidence that goes along with and confirms our belief system. Media coverage is one of the many factors that can insinuate biased beliefs into a juror. The media coverage of any court case will insist on who …show more content…

This is the only logical and justified method that can appear in a court case. An attempt needs to be made to reach the correct verdict at the end of a trial using solely case evidence; however, this is highly unlikely. Each individual is unique in his or her knowledge and experience. Though attempts can be made to limit prior experiences and influences, such as media coverage, to a court case, no individual is abstained from it. Life experiences, gender stereotypes, education level, socioeconomic status can all influence what an individual believes in, and believes to be the correct conclusion of the given court case. This obstacle can easily be overcome by having a diverse group of jurors, that have different life experiences. This will ensure that one set of beliefs will not predominate within the jurors. Additionally, it will also ensure that media exposure, if exposure did occur, will not influence each juror to the same

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Television shows such as CSI gives them the belief that any type of evidence is prominent to coming to a conclusion. Jurors are accustomed to the idea that evidence does not lie, since that is what’s showed on television. From watching television shows and court cases movies gives jurors conception that judges, lawyer, and evidence are what bring to concluding their verdict. Jurors expect the evidence to be conclusive since the technology is so advanced. Law & Order, not pertaining to any specific case usually have witnesses, and at times jurors expect the eyewitness to have solid facts as to applying it to the verdict.

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Usually, although not always, unfairly prejudicial evidence appeals to the jury's emotions rather than intellect.”

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In 2010 there were 2,352 Jury Trials and 394 Bench Trials. (Document A, 289) Furthermore, 2,066 of the accused during Jury trials were convicted, while as only 257 were found guilty during the Bench Trials. (Document A, 289) This leads some people to think that the Jury was filled with people who jumped to conclusions based on how the accused looked or had an emotional connection with the victim. I believe that the percentage of convicted compared to the acquitted is higher in Jury Trials because they had twelve sets of eyes going over the same case and were able to talk through it with each other.

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For example, an individual may connect to the person on trial by race, gender, ethnicity or commonality between the defendant and someone from their personal life. May also occur with events and situations being discussed on trial. Author Veronica Roth stated that “no matter how smart, people usually see what they 're already looking for, that 's all”, and this applies to the justice system in the sense that looking past the biases is and always will be difficult because one tends to ignore evidences because of overwhelming emotions from bias (Roth). It is ideal to have impartial jurors whom will seek to be fair and will endeavor to correct potential bias in the courtroom in themselves, but it is not logical.

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This personal bias may be based experiences and might subconsciously affect the decision of the juror. Overall, jurors have a high chance of having bias and affecting the outcome of the case with this

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This may cause the jury to be indecisive between what the actual case and what the media portrays it to be. The amount of media released for cases creates a negative impact within the courts and makes it difficult for a fair trial. When juries are uncertain about a case or a suspect, they result to social media platforms and news coverage that will provide them with more information and depth into the case. ‘’But if the case unfolds in the media, by the time a case gets to court, the supposedly impartial jury (or even the judge) may have already heard information and allegations (not admissible by court standards) that have caused them to seriously prejudice the parties’’. (Nedim, 2014).

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In the play Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose, we can see that prejudice gets in the way of truth. Many of the jurors that participated have let prejudice get in their way to see the truth and look at the real situation and facts, for example, Juror Three, who “is a very strong, very forceful, extremely opinionated man within whom can be detected a streak of sadism… is intolerant of opinions other than his own, and accustomed to forcing his wishes upon others.” He has a son that he identifies as a “tough guy”, which is one of the descriptions of the 19-year-old accused, Juror Three let the image of his own son be reflected on the boy and made him think unfairly. Getting to the bottom of a complex issue takes time and effort. At the beginning of the play, most jury members wanted to get over the case and go home as early as they could, but one of the jury members, Juror Eight, who was sure the boy was not guilty, took many hours to question the evidence and the case and murder itself, but he was not the only one as other jury members also spoke about what they thought in the past options, fairly quick, it was almost six in the evening and Juror Six wanted to leave to go to his family, it may have been more of an excuse to leave, but the jurors did not let him leave because they had gone far enough to decide where the trial was going

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Confirmation bias plays a critical role in reinforcing subjective thoughts and shaping what ends up being our social realities. Confirmation bias can be dangerous in some ways if one ignores the other side. It is

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If jurors are easily influenced by arguments, the whole purpose of the system will be invalid. Another factor that should not be overlooked is biases from jury members. The lack of professionalism can make them judge the case on irreverent characteristics like if the defendant is black or white, if they are rich or not, etc… This is strictly prohibited in law courts, but the influences in their brain cannot simply be erased just because someone is in

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In "twelve angry men," we can see how prejudice has its own way with the cloak of justice. Personal prejudice is most strongly evident in the characters of Juror #3 and Juror #10. At the beginning of story, Juror #3 immediately claimed that the case was simple and the defendant’s guilt was obvious. Although he was not a new juror and ought to be experienced

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“The children who come out of slum backgrounds are potential menaces to society” (Rose 318). Juror 3 was being biased in the play because his son hit or abused him like how the boy is being tried for stabbing or abusing his father. “When he was fifteen he hit me in the face” (Rose 317). Other times in real life that people could be biased is they have

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Siebert et al. , (1970) denoted that vior dire was the most used remedy to combat bias in PTP. The method is influential when examining for prejudice and bias due to PTP as it prompts thorough questioning and investigation of what or who is present during trial. In a study, 158 participants were questioned on the judgement and fairness of a defendant in a criminal case and found that those who acknowledged being bias still revealed bias in their decisions (Sue et al., 1975). Additionally, voir dire was described to reduce the effect of media and news coverage, however, results presented exhibited an escalation in condemnation and convictions of those who were shown ‘neutral' media reports, which may be explained by confounding variables (Padawr-Singer et al.,

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In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch more visually explains how confirmation bias works. He claims that people generally “see what they look for” and “hear what they listen for” (Lee 176). Essentially what this means for myself as an individual is that if I have a friend or family member that believes different things than I do, the reverse of confirmation bias will be true. In this case, the reverse would include altogether

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1472 Words | 6 Pages

In this paragraph, the advantages and disadvantages of trial by jury will be discussed. The main advantages are that juries introduce community values into the legal process and can influence the system (Joyce, 2013); they can achieve a sense of equity and fairness without enforcing unjust laws; in addition, juries are independent and neutral (Davies, 2015). Moreover, they guarantee participation from the public in a democratic institution (Hostettler, 2004), and represent the population thanks to the randomness with which jurors are decided (Davies, 2015). On the other hand, the most important disadvantages are that jurors have no prior contact with the courts, no training (Hostettler, 2004) and therefore they lack knowledge of law, courtroom proceedings (Joyce, 2013), and lack of ability to understand the legal directions (Thomas, 2010). Moreover, they must face evidence which is highly technical (Hostettler, 2004).

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It is everywhere. An example of bias can be found in politics and media. Frequently politicians feel that the press is biased toward them in an unfair way. On January 20, 2017, a reporter from the magazine “Time” falsely reported President Trump removed the bust of Martin Luther King from the Oval Office. This information was quickly spread.

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