The Anatomy of a Plea: How Uncertainty, Visualizations & Individual Differences Shape Plea Bargain Decisions

Figure 1: 1) Experiment 1 consisted of a series of 12 choices where participants were asked to decide between taking the plea or going to trial. Each participant saw distributions of potential trial sentences based on prior convictions via four presentation conditions: text, normal, left, and right. Each format conveyed 3 probabilities of conviction at trial: 20%, 50%, and 80% for a total of 12 trials. 2) In Experiment 2, participants were shown the distribution of potential trial sentences based on prior convictions via one of six randomly assigned presentation conditions: density, dotplot, interval, HOP, text 𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑦 or text 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛 . They were presented with a decision sheet where they could choose when to take the plea and when to switch their decision to enter the trial. The study consisted of 3 decision sheets corresponding to the probability of conviction at trial values of 20%, 50%, and 80%. 3) Experiment 3 was identical to Experiment 2, but participants only had 17 seconds to enter their choices.