The automatic influence of advocacy on lawyers and novices
Abstract
It has long been known that advocating for a cause can alter the advocate's beliefs. Yet a guiding assumption of many advocates is that the biasing effect of advocacy is controllable. Lawyers, for instance, are taught that they can retain unbiased beliefs while advocating for their clients and that they must do so to secure just outcomes. Across ten experiments (six preregistered; N = 3,104) we show that the biasing effect of advocacy is not controllable but automatic. Merely incentivizing people to advocate altered a range of beliefs about character, guilt and punishment. This bias appeared even in beliefs that are highly stable, when people were financially incentivized to form true beliefs and among professional lawyers, who are trained to prevent advocacy from biasing their judgements.
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Organizational factors are especially acute in an adversarial legal system, as adversarial allegiance and mindset can cause judgments and conclusions about the same identical evidence to depend on which side retained them.
“Organizational factors are especially acute in an adversarial legal system, as adversarial allegiance and mindset can cause judgments and conclusions (about the same identical evidence) to depend on which side retained them.”
From Biased and biasing: the hidden bias cascade and bias snowball effects (2025) · cites this paper as Melnikoff & Strohminger, 2020
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References 32 · Cited by 49
- Authors
- Melnikoff, D. E., & Strohminger, N.
- Affiliations
- Yale University (US)
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Corresponding author
- Melnikoff, David E.
- Venue
- Nature Human Behaviour
- Published
- 2020-09-07
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 1258-1264
- ISSN
- 2397-3374 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3083767265
- Cited by
- 49
- References
- 32
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 7.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Nature Human Behaviour (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Psychology of Social Influence
- Keywords
- advocacy, belief bias, lawyers, role identity, financial incentives, guilt, punishment, professional ethics
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Motivation, Psychological Tests, Lawyers, Young Adult
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