Sentencing Under Uncertainty: Anchoring Effects in the Courtroom‘ BIRTE ENGLICH~ THOMAS MUSSWEILER Research Institute for Public Administration at the German Post-Graduate School of Administratwe Sciences Speyer; Germany Unrversitat Wurzburg Wurzburg, Germany Research on juridical decision making has demonstrated that largely disparate sentences are often given for identical crimes. This may be the case because judges’ sentencing deci- sions are influenced by a recommended or demanded sentence. Building on research on judgmental anchoring (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974), the present investigation examines whether a sentencing demand has a direct influence on a given sentence. Using criminal trial judges as participants, Study 1 demonstrates that such a direct influence does, in fact, exist. Sentencing decisions are assimilated to the sentence demanded by the prosecutor. Study 2 further reveals that this influence is independent of the perceived relevance of the sentencing demand. Study 3 demonstrates that this influence is also independent of judges’ experience. There is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. - Charles Dickens, Great Expectations As Dickens’ statement indicates, people care a great deal about receiving just treatment. Consequently, societies have established elaborate legal systems to ensure justice. However, evidence is accumulating that this objective is not always met. For instance, the very same legal case may lead to largely disparate sentences if evaluated by different judges (e.g., Austin & Williams, 1977; Ebbesen & Konecni, 1981; Hogarth, 1971). Thus, offenders who have committed identical crimes may receive remarkably different sentences. The search for pos- sible sources of such sentencing disparities (for an overview, see Wrightsman, Nietzel, & Fortune, 1994) has focused primarily on specific attributes of the judge, such as his or her experience (Myers, 1988), political affiliation (Nagel, ‘The present research was supported by a grant from the German Science Foundation (DFG, grant number 264/17-1). We would like to thank Fritz Strack for his helpful suggestions concerning this research. 2Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Birte Englich, Psychologie 11, Universitat Wurzburg, Rontgenring 10, D-97070 Wurzburg, Germany. e-mail: englich@ psycholo- gie.uni-wuerzburg.de 1535 Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2001,31, 7, pp. 1535-1 551. Copyright 0 2001 by V. H. Winston 8 Son, Inc. All rights reserved.