An emotional shock can activate racial bias in judges who otherwise show none

Evidence

Eren and Mocan (2018), however, showed that if the sentencing date in juvenile court cases in Louisiana happened to be during the week following a surprise loss of the Louisiana State University (LSU) football team, defendants received longer sentences—and this impact was driven by judges who received their undergraduate degrees from LSU. Importantly, the authors showed that, disregarding the impact of football games, there was no evidence of discrimination (in the sense of Equation (1)): the race of the defendant had no impact on judicial decisions after controlling for relevant case and defendant attributes. However, after a surprising LSU loss, racial bias emerged: the impact on sentence length following an upset loss was borne by Black defendants, suggesting an implicit bias against Blacks that emerged only when the judge had suffered an emotional shock. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 754

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• SEED: Essay angle: how ‘irrelevant’ exogenous emotional triggers expose latent biases that impartial-procedure systems assume away — the LSU football finding is a vivid hook for institutional design.
• XREF: Connects to Danziger parole fatigue findings below and to the broader literature on implicit bias activation under load.
• CANDY: A judge’s alma mater’s surprise football loss leads to longer sentences for Black defendants the following week — perfect dinner-party fact.

Related

• Bias against Black defendants emerges only after judges suffer emotional shocks (similarity 0.95)