Legal Evidence–Authority Dissociation in juror judgment: a multistudy reanalysis of memory contamination and AI advice
- 1School of Law, Tianjin University , ,
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.
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BibTeX
@article{xie2026legal,
title = {{Legal Evidence–Authority Dissociation in juror judgment: a multistudy reanalysis of memory contamination and AI advice}},
author = {Xiangran Xie},
journal = {Frontiers in psychology},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1956486},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC13719418},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Legal Evidence–Authority Dissociation in juror judgment: a multistudy reanalysis of memory contamination and AI advice
AU - Xiangran Xie
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/16
JO - Frontiers in psychology
DO - 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1956486
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC13719418
AB - 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.
SN - 1664-1078
ER -