Behavioral Biases and Judicial Decision-Making in Brazil

Abstract

We identify and present Brazil’s most common behavioral and heuristic biases in judicial decision-making. Through bibliographic and specific cases, we notice the occurrence of the representativeness heuristic, availability heuristic, anchoring heuristic (anchoring effect), confirmation bias, and affect heuristic bias in Brazilian judicial decisions. We also present the current state of Brazilian legislation and its amendments that aim at impartiality in the production, the assessment of evidence, and the judge’s conviction. Finally, we present the suggestions and initiatives that aim to mitigate biases and heuristics in judicial decision-making in Brazil, especially with awareness techniques, the replacement of judges by algorithms, and the review of judicial decisions by collegiate bodies.

Keywords

• decision-making
• behavioral insights
• impartiality
• judicial biases
• cognitive biases
• behavioral economics