I wish it were possible to know the number of Holiday Inns where I have stayed and the number of nights I have stayed in them. When my parents and I traveled across the “lower 48″ states in the United States, our hotel of choice was Holiday Inn. Often, we planned our itinerary around the location of Holiday Inns. I loved swimming in the pool in every Holiday Inn we visited. Those were the days! In my work as a trial consultant since 1989, my travels have taken me across the United States, from Alaska to the U.S. Virgin

Call it a deposit; call it a retainer. Magnus doesn’t start work without one (except in rare circumstances beyond the scope of this post). We need money, we want money; importantly, other people want money. We learned, the hard way, that clients need to “show us the money.” One of our first cases blew up on us and the client pulled the plug after we started spending our money on his behalf (and we had little to spend in year 1). He cost us what seemed like a fortune at the time and we never heard from him again.

Why do some people help others in need while other people appear to ignore the suffering of another person? What factors make it likely that bystanders will intervene when a stranger is in obvious need of help, for example, while being attacked in a public place? What is the impact of other people on the willingness of someone to help a stranger in distress? These, and related, questions have been asked and answered by social psychologists over the past 50 years. In fact, the bystander effect, also known as bystander apathy, is one of the most frequently researched topics

Biases and heuristics often, but not always, go hand in hand. While bias is attributed to the absence of reflective thought, leading to limitations in judgment, heuristics are used intentionally when making inferences. Heuristics are common sense reasoning strategies employed by laypersons. They are “shortcuts” that accelerate the decision making process. Heuristics may or may not be based on logic and they may or may not lead to the correct decision. Heuristics have been extensively researched by social psychologists (and economists) since the 1970s. Magnus’ reports often include the heuristics employed by mock jurors when they deliberate on a case.

Social desirability has important implications in jury selection. Social desirability refers to the phenomenon of saying or doing something because “everybody else” does. For example, when an attorney or a judge asks a prospective juror whether he/she can put aside all biases, predisposed beliefs, and personal feelings and instead, be an impartial judge of the facts of the case being tried based on the law and the evidence, the socially desirable answer is “Yes.” Few among us want other people to believe or know, with certainty, that we are biased, have already made up our minds about the defendant’s