Number range CHAPTERComputer animations used in court colored by bias,
researchers say

Jim Barlow, Life Sciences Editor

217-333-5802; jebarlow@uiuc.edu

4/10/06

Click photo to enlarge

University of Illinois Photo

Research by Neal J. Roese, a professor of psychology, indicates that in
a courtroom a \"computer animation introduces its own additional bias,
making \[jurors\] more punitive and more likely to hand out harsh
penalties."

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. --- A courtroom jury views a computer animation of a
vehicle accident or heinous crime. Does it help bring a conviction or
acquittal? With no clear standards for animations that re-create
incidents, the verdict is still out, and, for now, it may depend on
which side created the simulation, researchers say.

In a study of 117 undergraduate students, psychologists discovered that
movements in a sequence of events, as well as the duration portrayed, in
animations such as re-creations of a crime can double an already
troubling hindsight bias.

Hindsight bias has been linked to the traditional use of text and
diagrams to re-create crimes, and is known to interfere with the ability
to make fair decisions because it often leads jurists to exaggerate the
predictability of past events.

"Many lawyers assume that computer video animations help clarify the
evidence, and, therefore, help jury decisions to be fairer and more
closely grounded in the facts," said Neal J. Roese, a professor of
psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Our
findings indicate instead that a computer animation introduces its own
additional bias, making people more punitive and more likely to hand out
harsh penalties."

Roese and colleagues suggest that by viewing a computer-animated
re-creation of an event, a person's confidence is heightened -- but not
necessarily accurately. An animation, they say, provides movement as
reconstructed by a prosecution, plaintiff or defense witness to
reconfirm or heighten a jurist's hindsight feeling that "I knew it all
along."

In the study, published in the April issue of the journal Psychological
Science, some students viewed computer animations of highway incidents
prepared for real court cases by Eleventh Hour Animation of Skokie, Ill.
The idea was to compare judgments made in foresight, where an outcome is
not known, with hindsight, where the outcome is known. A control group
viewed text-plus-diagram re-creations.

One animation, 19 seconds long, showed a car following an 18-wheeler on
a two-lane highway. The car attempted to pass but collided with a truck
coming from the opposite direction. An 11-second depiction showed a
semi-trailer avoiding a slow-moving vehicle that was turning into its
path on a two-lane highway; the truck collided with a bus coming from
the opposite direction. Both films showed the events from bird's-eye
views.

Participants were told in advance that they would see cases in which
accidents may have occurred. Some participants viewed the entire
re-creations with the accidents shown, whereas others saw depictions
that were stopped before the accidents occurred.

Participants seeing the outcome then were told to disregard their
knowledge of it and put themselves in the shoes of those who had watched
clips that did not show results. All participants estimated the
likelihoods of the various outcomes, from no accident at all to the
serious accidents that, in fact, did occur. The hindsight, widely
observed in past research, was found again.

"Participants who see how an accident happens have a very difficult time
disregarding this knowledge and cannot place themselves in the shoes of
naïve observers who did not see the accident," Roese said. "This
hindsight bias occurred regardless of whether participants watched the
scenes in computer animations, or if they read text descriptions of the
events."

The findings suggest that when it comes to issues of liability or
negligence, judgments that hinge on assessing what defendants know at
the time of their actions, rather than what came later, the use of
computer animations might be an especially big problem.

"Some courts rule them as inadmissible, many do not," Roese said.
"Supposedly an animation is based directly on the available evidence and
the laws of physics, and when animations are allowed, it is under the
assumption that the video accurately illustrates the event. But the
truth is that all reconstructions of evidence contain inherent
imprecision."

Animated reconstructions, the authors argue, illustrate far more
information about an accident for after-accident observers to consider
than the involved drivers ever had when their situation was still
unfolding.

Co-authors with Roese were psychology doctoral students Florian Fessel
and Amy Summerville; Justin Kruger, a former U. of I. psychology
professor now with the Leonard Stern School of Management at New York
University; and Michael Dilich of FORESIGHT Reconstruction Inc., a
research and consulting firm in Northbrook, Ill., which specializes in
vehicle-accident investigation, reconstruction, analysis and safety
research.