An experimental study of punitive damage awards in personal injury cases was conducted, using jury-eligible respondents. There was substantial consensus on judgments of the outrageousness of a defendant's actions and of the appropriate severity of punishment. Judgments of dollar awards made by...

Participants in contingent valuation surveys and jurors setting punitive damages in civil trials provide answers denominated in dollars. These answers are better understood as expressions of attitudes than as indications of economic preferences. Well-established characteristics of attitudes and...

Students, retired judges, economists, and others made judgments of appropriate penalties and compensation for hypothetical injuries. In some scenarios, compensation was paid by the government and penalties were paid to the government, so the two could differ. Penalties were generally...

Bias toward the status quo, found in choice and in emotional reactions to adverse outcomes, has been confounded with bias toward omission. The authors unconfounded these effects with scenarios in which change occurs unless action is taken. Subjects reacted more strongly to adverse outcomes...

We develop a new version of prospect theory that employs cumulative rather than separable decision weights and extends the theory in several respects. This version, called cumulative prospect theory, applies to uncertain as well as to risky prospects with any number of outcomes, and it allows...

This paper explores how people process information on low probability-high consequence negative events and what it will take to get individuals to be sensitive to the likelihood of these types of accidents or disasters. In a set of experiments, information is presented to individuals on the...