Remorse Bias in Legal Decision-Making

Existing research suggests that a defendant's displays of remorse, frequently used to make attributions about their character, can act as valuable evidence for decision-makers in legal contexts. However, assessing remorse is a subjective process implicitly limited by human cognition, often stemming from expectations about how remorse should be expressed and whether some individuals are even capable of feeling it. This can lead legal decision-makers to potentially misread and discount a defendant's true feelings of remorse as disingenuous. Recent empirical work suggests that this social cognitive phenomenon, known as remorse bias , can lead to adverse outcomes for some defendants in the legal system—especially for those with personal characteristics that are commonly socially stereotyped or quite different from decision-makers’ backgrounds. This article provides an overview of the concept of and recent empirical literature surrounding remorse bias in the legal system, including its impacts on decision-making and potential implications.