Legal Evidence–Authority Dissociation in juror judgment: a multistudy reanalysis of memory contamination and AI advice
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Introduction: Legal decision makers may remember information without using it to update a legal judgment, and may respond differently to the same recommendation depending on its attributed source. LEAD separates these processes into memory-entry, judgment-incorporation, and authority-deference gates. Methods: We reanalyzed three public, de-identified datasets: one jury-deliberation misinformation study and two preregistered judge-versus-artificial-intelligence sentencing studies. We compared gate-specific estimates while retaining study-specific outcomes and raw units. Results: In Study 1, pro-prosecution misinformation crossed the memory-entry gate more clearly than the judgment-incorporation gate. In Studies 2 and 3, mitigating case facts produced larger judgment-incorporation effects than authority-source assignment. The authority-source effect was equivalent to zero within a prespecified small-effect bound in Study 2 (source Experiment 1), but remained inconclusive in Study 3 (source Experiment 2). Discussion: LEAD identifies which process changed and supports cross-gate magnitude comparisons without treating unlike outcomes as identical. This secondary analysis does not estimate behavior in real courts, but it provides a transparent framework for forensic and legal psychology.
Source: Frontiers in Psychology
Author: Xiangran Xie
Institution: Tianjin University
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,801
OpenAlex ID: W7222620846