Expert validation bias
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The psychology of legal relations
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In which JC plays amateur criminal psychologist.
We are pattern-matching machines. When we are artificially motivated to find patterns and discouraged by system incentives from looking for other ones, we get good at zeroing in on what we are hoping to find.
This is a form of confirmation bias. Experts, particularly, are primed and motivated to see patterns that conform to existing structures in their professional calling — call this expert validation bias or “man with a hammer” bias — it is a narrower variation of the Law of the Instrument.
We all construct our worlds using tools already in our shed. Experts have particularly sharp tools, so they are all the more inclined to use them. They are also motivated to embrace narratives that promote their own professional significance (all this “make way, I’m a doctor” bias, but it is part of the same thing).
The captures what’s commonly known as Maslow’s hammer — if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, or instrument bias, professional deformation, domain specificity bias (a tendency to apply domain-specific knowledge to problems that might require different approaches) or expertise-induced blindness (when expertise creates inadvertent blind spots to alternative explanations).
Experts tend to see patterns that validate their existing expertise. They tend to emphasise explanations that reinforce their professional importance.
In the legal system, these cognitive tendencies are reinforced by professional and institutional rewards. Financial and career incentives align with and amplify these biases.