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1-Page Summary of Unfair

Overview

A 40-year-old Virginia schoolteacher was happily married until he started experiencing strange sexual urges. He collected child pornography and tried to molest his stepdaughter, which led him to seek help for severe headaches. A brain scan revealed a large tumor in his brain.

A man had a tumor removed from his brain. After the surgery, he was no longer sexually aroused by children. This leads to an important question of whether or not it is right to punish someone for something they cannot control, like a disease.

The justice system in the United States is unfair. This is because of cognitive biases that cloud our judgment and make us more likely to punish criminals harshly than we would be if we were not biased. In this key point, you’ll learn how David Rosenbaum died from a vomit stain on his shoulder; why judges judge more fairly after lunch; and why current ways of punishing criminals are just not working.

Big Idea #1: Hastily assigning the wrong labels to people can lead to unfair treatment.

A vomit stain can make the difference between life and death. A New York Times reporter, David Rosenbaum, found this out after being attacked on the street. The passersby who found him assumed he was just another drunk lying unconscious on the curb because of a vomit stain on his jacket. They thus did not realize that he was in critical condition.

David died from head injuries, and things might have turned out differently if he hadn’t been mislabeled. These kinds of mistakes aren’t rare because humans are quick to jump to conclusions based on little evidence. The two main processes that order our brains are responsible for this behavior.

The automatic process is fast and efficient. It takes in a scene and quickly forms an opinion based on the evidence presented, ignoring missing pieces of information. The deliberative mental process works through information more carefully and can override these initial impressions.

When David threw up, firefighters and police officers assumed that he was drunk. They didn’t think about the possibility that it could be something else.

This story shows that how we label people affects how they’re treated. Consider this study: when participants looked at photos of Olympic athletes, middle-class Americans or the disabled, their brain registered feelings of human interaction. However, when asked to look at photos of homeless people and addicts, their brains registered disgust rather than human interaction.

This study confirms a sad fact: most of us don’t regard those who are desperately down and out as human beings with feelings and needs. Instead, we tend to view alcoholism and similar disorders as choices, or voluntary behaviors. This tendency is called moral distancing, which leads us to treat substance abusers differently than others.

Clearly, we should avoid labeling people in a negative way. In the next key point, you’ll find out how to do that.

Big Idea #2: Suspects are subject to grueling interrogations, which can lead to false confessions.

Juan Rivera was falsely accused of rape and murder. Although his semen didn’t match the sample at the crime scene and he had an alibi, he spent 15 years in prison before being released. Why do people confess to crimes they didn’t commit?

One of the reasons we believe that others think alike is that no one wants to be seen as an idiot or uninformed. People want to fit in and be liked, so they conform their thoughts according to peer pressure.

In other words, we can’t separate convincing lies – like false confessions – from the truth. This tendency is compounded by an erroneous faith in the criminal justice system.