[author]Shu Guoying

[content]

Public Recognition of Judicial Judgment in the Era of Network Media: An Approach Based on Information Processing Theory

Shu Guoying, Qian Duansheng Chair Professor at China University of Political Science and Law

Wang Nan, PhD candidate in Jurisprudence, China University of Political Science and Law

Abstract: Under the traditional thinking framework, information asymmetry is attributed to one of the important reasons for the"gap" between public cognition and judicial judgment. Through the comparison of three groups of experiments between the judge's sentencing judgment and the public's cognition under "concise" information, the judge's sentencing judgment and the public's cognition under the background of "equal amount" information, and the public's cognition of "concise" and "detailed" information, it is found that the information variables of the case text have an important influence on the public's cognition. However, contrary to the traditional thinking framework, that is, compared with "concise" information, in the context of "detailed" information, the gap between the public's cognitive results and the judge's cognitive results has not narrowed, but has further widened, which also reflects that the case text information cannot play a decisive role in the individual decision-making results. The research results also imply the important influence of cognitive internal factors on the decision-making process to some extent, that is, the differences in individual cognitive thinking, knowledge and experience lead to the emergence of cognitive differences between the two. As the decision-making subjects, the difference of justice between the public and the judge due to their different moral standards is the important reason for their different cognitive internal factors.

Keyword: Information Processing; Judge Sentencing; Public Cognition; Judicial Trust;

Introduction

With the deepening of the construction of the rule of law in our country, people are paying more and more attention to the issues of fairness and justice in judicial judgments, hoping that justice will become the backing to ensure and achieve social fairness and justice. The rapid dissemination of information in the era of online media has made it more convenient for the public to receive information in the context of media empowerment, broadened the spatial and temporal dimensions of public access to information, and provided multiple channels for public opinion expression and communication. In recent years, more and more judicial cases have attracted widespread attention from the public through Internet communication and media reports. Under the traditional assumption, due to incomplete or inaccurate case information exposed and stated by online media, insufficient reasoning in China's judicial documents and other reasons, there is often a certain deviation in the cognition between the judiciary and the public, leading the public to question the judge's judgment results, which is reflected in the emotional and group polarization of online public opinion in the process of communication, such as the "Li Changkui case", "Mo Huanjing arson homicide case", "Yu Huan homicide case", and "Zhang Koukou homicide case". By analyzing some of the "mainstream" public opinion, we found that the public's expectation for fair sentencing mainly reflects a "consensus" concept of justice, which appeals to the consensus between judges and the public on sentencing, that is, the degree of compatibility between sentencing for a judge in a certain case and the public's perception of sentencing. This public opinion demand gradually affects the public's recognition of judicial fairness. Therefore, the following questions constitute the focus of this article: whether external information is the dominant factor in the generation of individual cognitive outcomes, and whether it is possible to improve the alignment between judge sentencing and public cognition by enhancing information symmetry. The research on the influencing factor of "information quantity" in reality and past psychology has attracted the attention of this study. Merely discussing the value stance of judicial fairness cannot provide an ideal centripetal force support for social consensus. This study aims to consider traditional hypotheses by using information quantity as the research variable and provide a pathway for the cognitive mechanism that may bridge the gap between judicial adjudication and public identity.

1.Problem formulation and method selection

The 2018 Guangxi "Passion Fruit Girl Murder Case" immediately attracted high public attention to the case, and the defendant's cruel criminal behavior and the imbalance in sentencing caused by the second trial's revision of the case further dragged the parties involved and the court into a vortex of public opinion. The public has raised doubts about the legitimacy of the second instance court's decision to change the original immediate execution of the death penalty to a two-year suspension of execution in the first instance judgment. Obviously, the judgment did not meet the public's expectations for fairness and justice. In response to public concerns, the Supreme People's Court has decided, after examination, to initiate a retrial procedure for the case. The Li Changkui case, the Hundred Fragrant Fruit Girl Murder case, and other typical examples of initiating retrial procedures due to the serious violation of public opinion by judicial judgments, have triggered our thinking on the interactive game relationship between trial results and public opinion, as well as the public opinion risks in judicial judgments.

In the current media of diversified content filled with the Internet, network public opinion, as a reflection of the psychology of Internet users, has entered the vision of psychologists and legal scholars in the gradual growth of the number of groups and the gradual increase of social influence, and has promoted the academic community to start paying attention to the research on the cognitive differences between the public and judges, and has been continuously following up and exploring in the fields of public trust in the judicial system, the game between justice and the public, and revealing the thinking characteristics and influencing factors of judges' judgments.

In the study of the recognition of judicial fairness, legal realism adopts an empirical research method, aiming to cross integrate law and other social sciences, further improving the scientificity of research. This trend presents a viewpoint that in contemporary society, the recognition of judicial fairness not only depends on its objective and rational attributes, but also requires the recognition of social subjects, otherwise it will weaken its authority and credibility. Due to the complex emotional and rational psychological demands intertwined among the subjects involved in the issue of "same-sex recognition" in judicial judgments, in order to further explore and analyze the cognitive differences between the public and judges, we have shifted our focus to the research on individual decision-making in Cognitive Science in recent years.

Cognitive science focuses on the connections between different disciplines and attempts to build bridges between them. According to the perspective of cognitive science, thinking requires us to make internal representations of the external world and manipulate these internal representations. Research in cognitive science has focused on these internal representations, surpassing behaviorist guidance where researchers only focus on observable stimuli and reactions in the external world, without paying attention to the bottlenecks encountered in the internal thinking process. Cognitive science also pays attention to individual cognitive differences and cognitive biases. Cognitive bias can be seen as a special form of cognitive difference. Specifically, in individuals with cognitive differences, if one party's cognitive outcome is considered correct, then for the other party, the cognitive difference between the two parties is equivalent to the cognitive bias they exhibit. Decision making, as one of the most important and complex cognitive processes for individuals, has a profound impact on their current adaptation and long-term development. The formation of cognitive differences is mainly influenced by two aspects: external environmental factors and internal individual differences. In the field of decision-making, cognitive differences are viewed as an interaction and game between internal and external influencing factors in the decision-making process, that is, as a dynamic operation process of cognitive structure. Individual decision-making is not only influenced by external stimuli from different aspects, but also by the internal representation process of individual differences, and influences the real environment through specific decision-making behavior and action performance. How to understand the formation mechanism of these cognitive differences and develop solutions to cognitive biases has become a focus of decision-making research in cognitive psychology in recent years.

Introducing cognitive structures into specific sentencing decision-making contexts in the field of judicial adjudication, revealing the thinking characteristics and influencing factors of judges' judgments, has become a research hotspot in the interdisciplinary fields of law and psychology. In public cognition research related to judicial decision-making, some scholars have relied on cognitive neuroscience technology to find that unconscious personal beliefs often hinder personal reasoning. However, there is also an interactive and coordinated process between personal cognitive characteristics and objective evidence in the process of judicial reasoning. The interaction between personal beliefs and evidence has a unique neural representation. Evidence consistent with personal beliefs activates neural tissues related to learning and memory, while evidence inconsistent with personal beliefs is more likely to trigger neural tissue activity related to errors.

These research perspectives are beneficial for enhancing our understanding of judicial fairness and identity recognition, and provide optional strategies for improving identity recognition, namely how to view the public's attitude towards judicial decisions, and improving the stability and consistency of social members' recognition of judicial fairness at the normative level. The existing research can be described as exquisite and standardized, with overlapping meanings, but there are also shortcomings. Firstly, existing research has focused more on macro interpretation of judge decision-making from the perspective of cognitive psychology, using relevant theories to explain the general principles and characteristics of cognition. However, in shaping consensus between judges and the public and improving the level of judicial fairness recognition, there is little attention paid to the general public's psychological understanding of the law, and there is a lack of comparative analysis of the cognitive structure of judges and the public in a specific sentencing decision-making context. As a result, there is little exploration of the dominant factors that form cognitive differences between judges and the public. For example, existing research has examined factors such as public expectations and external criticism that influence how judges make decisions. However, only unilateral discussions on the decisions of judges cannot answer questions such as how they affect the level of public judicial recognition. Therefore, research in the field of judicial adjudication should also focus on both judges and the public. Secondly, most studies still adhere to behaviorism as the guiding ideology, limiting the cognitive behavior of "decision-making" to the formula of "external stimuli → behavioral responses", and placing internal thinking representations related to decision-making in a "dark box" without much attention. This leads to researchers often paying attention to external factors in specific sentencing situations, resulting in the overall structure of cognitive processing being ignored. For example, when discussing factors that affect judge decision-making, external factors such as cognitive fluency can affect judicial decisions, while normative information can reduce the influence of personal beliefs on their reasoning. Although relatively few studies have verified the influence of internal factors, there are still theories that emphasize internal factors. The judge's decision-making process can be strictly divided into two parts - legal discovery (how the judge makes decisions) and legal argumentation (how the judge openly defends their own judgments), and individual reasoning in the decision-making process can have an impact on the "legal discovery" part of the decision-making process. Of course, current research rarely covers the overall cognitive structure, which focuses on both external and internal factors. The main reason for this is that the most challenging problem is that individual cognitive processes often involve many variables, so it is often unrealistic to attempt to construct a model that can cover all cognitive structures. Therefore, this article examines the cognitive differences between judges and the public from the perspective of information processing theory in a specific legal context (i.e. sentencing decision-making context), attempting to go beyond the uncertainty of existing research that hovers between the two research orientations of judges and the public, hoping to provide relevant solutions for practical problems in the legal field.

Social science research often manifests as a probabilistic study, specifically, it is the process of re integrating scattered and individual characteristic data into regular cognition. In terms of method selection, this study adopts empirical research methods, cognitive psychology methods, and model construction methods. Through theoretical analysis and empirical survey data statistics, a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis is used to explore the regular thinking patterns and psychological mechanisms of judges and the public when making judgments in the face of the same case data. The study understands the general attitude of the public towards punishment, compares the different judgments made by the public in the face of detailed information in the same case, and through graphical processing of survey data, constructs cognitive models of judges and the public's thinking based on theoretical foundations and abstracts their general rules. Combining with existing institutional arrangements and current social conditions, the cognitive models of judges and the public are implemented in specific case decision-making processes, reducing the gap between judges and the public perception.

2. Cognitive Logic under Information Processing Theory

2.1 Theoretical framework of information processing

Information Processing Psychology refers to a psychology that studies individual cognitive processes, also known as narrow cognitive psychology. Specifically, the individual cognitive process is similar to the process of computer processing programs, essentially both of which involve information processing. As shown in Figure 1, the information processing model divides human cognitive processes into four steps: attention, encoding, storage, and extraction.

Figure 1: Four Steps of Information Processing Model

The above information processing theory is applied to a cognitive system, where external stimuli serve as the initial "input" and play an important role in the information processing model. The objective existence of external stimulus information is a prerequisite for individual perceptual and attentional processing, and the characteristics of external stimulus information also affect individual perceptual and attentional processing. As the beginning of the four step information processing model, attention can change the cognitive processing of the next three steps by influencing the first step of attentional processing. Starting from the individual's perception, the existing constructive perception theory suggests that human perception is the result of the integration of external stimuli and internal representations (internal experience, memory), which contain two complementary perspectives - direct perception and indirect perception. Research has shown that when environmental stimulus information is clear and abundant, it manifests as an objective level of pattern recognition automation, namely direct perception; When the environmental stimulus information is relatively vague, indirect perception has an advantage. At this time, the perception of objective things mainly depends on the knowledge and experience of the perceiver themselves. This means that indirect perception is not only caused by input external stimuli, but also the result of the interaction between external stimulus information and one's current background, experience, knowledge, and emotional state. At this point, the individual's processing of external stimuli has entered the second stage of information processing theory, namely the "encoding" stage. Although there is an irreconcilable contradiction between direct perception and indirect perception intuitively, breaking away from this binary opposition can reveal that they can serve as complementary perspectives to explain the types of different cognitive objects. For example, in image recognition, direct perception of visual stimuli is more commonly used; When reading text, individuals tend to use indirect perception to "decode" semantics by mobilizing existing knowledge.

The purpose of information processing theory is not to attempt to prove the concretization process of internal emotional considerations, but to place individuals into specific social systems, analyze and interpret the characterization of individual behavior and the relevant factors (external or internal) that affect the operation of the system, and establish a framework for understanding individual behavior. From a functional perspective, information not only provides the background of individual actions (personal or social), but also becomes a prerequisite element that influences individual cognitive processing. The information processing theory provides a fundamental perspective for understanding individual cognitive patterns, and its research and development are based on a core fundamental idea that, unlike behaviorism, individuals do not simply respond to stimulus information, but actively process the received information. However, as the basic framework for revealing individual cognitive structures, this perspective cannot provide further details when used to explain and predict problems in various complex cognitive contexts. Therefore, it is necessary to apply it to specific cognitive contexts in real practice, and explore the external and internal factors that affect the cognitive process in specific contexts to test its rationality and limitations.

2.2 An Information Processing Model for Judges' Sentencing Decisions

This article focuses on the application of information processing theory in the context of judicial sentencing. Judicial adjudication is a process involving individual judgment and decision-making, which has certain limitations. Examining how judges organize, interpret, and apply information about criminals is crucial for understanding the process and outcomes of judicial sentencing. Existing research has paid much attention to the sentencing differences between judges and attempted to construct a specific model of judge decision-making to explain the sentencing differences between judges. Specifically, the difference in sentencing among judges is mainly reflected in the different severity of sentencing imposed by the same judge on different cases, different judges on the same or similar cases. Some research findings have found that judges use two types of thinking throughout the entire judicial decision-making process. The first type of thinking is legal discovery, and the second type of thinking is legal evidence (also known as judicial evidence). Among them, legal discovery can be further subdivided, mainly including two stages: "discovery" and "detection". The former provides alternative options for decision-making, while the latter provides reference for screening the best options. Problem solving and legal argumentation jointly complete complex judicial tasks, forming a complete mode of judicial thinking. In specific judicial situations, the judge's decision-making process revolves around "facts" and "rules".

As shown in Figure 2, based on the above information processing process and combined with specific sentencing situations of judges, a relatively complete and systematic judge decision-making model can be obtained. This model can unify the interpretation of the sentencing process of judges by formalist and realistic jurisprudence. Obviously, from the perspective of information processing, examining the sentencing decisions of judges involves a complex cognitive system that can represent the interrelationships between a series of propositions and handle the impact of each inferential proposition on the task, in order to capture the fluidity, flexibility, and interconnectedness of legal arguments.

Figure 2 Information Processing Model of Judge's Sentencing Decision

2.3 The cognitive differences and influencing factors between the public and judges in sentencing situations

Previous studies have rarely focused on the sentencing decisions of both the public and judges simultaneously, thus exploring the cognitive differences and influencing factors between the two in sentencing contexts. Therefore, based on the cognitive gaps between judges and the public in reality, this study explores whether the public's sentencing decision-making process can also be based on information processing theory, and derives an information processing model with a structure similar to that of judges in sentencing decision-making mentioned above. However, the differences in information processing models between the two in specific sentencing contexts constitute the focus of this article's attention and discussion.

As shown in Figure 3, based on the sentencing decision model of judges, under the traditional thinking framework, the reasons for the cognitive differences between the public and judges are as follows: firstly, due to their limited exposure to case information, in the "information input" stage, the public and judges also have differences in the process of information transformation due to the different amounts of information they receive. Under traditional assumptions, this is due to the decisive factor of public and judge cognitive differences. Secondly, due to the limited legal knowledge of the public, it is difficult for them to effectively output case information using legal reasoning methods like judges in the process of transforming and processing external stimulus information.

Figure 3 Comparison of information processing models for public decision-making under traditional assumptions

So, is the above traditional assumption reasonable? Is the external factor (information volume) that affects individual cognition in sentencing contexts a decisive factor in influencing individual decision-making outcomes? How do external factors affect an individual's internal factors to derive decision-making outcomes? In the process of making judgments on specific cases, judges will make comprehensive judgments based on current laws and regulations in a more rational way. Their systematic internal cognitive processing path can serve as a strong belief or consciousness. Therefore, it is reasonable to speculate that external factors such as the level of detail of case information and emotional information in media reports will have little impact on the judge's judgment results. However, the public's perception of judicial decisions may not be so stable. As mentioned earlier, the case information disseminated through social media channels that the public comes into contact with often has deviations and omissions from the actual situation, and the public does not have the conditions to verify the information, and the ability to discern the information is also insufficient. Therefore, whether the case information is comprehensive and whether it contains biased and emotional information is sufficient to change and influence the public's perception of the case, thereby leading to differences in public perception of judicial judgment results.

3. An experiment on sentencing decision-making between judges and the public

3.1 Research ideas

This article provides a research path for understanding cognition action from the perspective of information processing and construction. The reality is often more complex, and in order to avoid falling into the trap of teleology caused by the appearance of reality, if it is not claiming an inevitable connection, it is necessary to investigate and analyze the relevant factors that affect public cognition action in legal contexts. The cognitive process of an individual often involves numerous variables, so it is often unrealistic to find a model that can cover all cognitive structures. From the above traditional assumptions, it can be seen that there are often intuitive differences between the text read by the public and judges for the same judicial case, and information processing models that are suitable for specific sentencing situations have not yet been presented in previous research. Therefore, this article takes external information stimuli as variables and relies on information processing theory to further investigate and explore the impact of external textual information stimuli on public decision-making in cognitive processes, as well as the sources of cognitive differences between judges and the public.

The case information that the public comes into contact with in reality is different from the objective and detailed file materials in the judge's judgment. It is often related information obtained by traditional media or online media. This requires the use of framing research, which involves studying the framework used by media to report on issues or events, as well as the relationship between this framework and individuals' real-life understanding. Due to the fact that the amount of information is a general concept, in order to make the research results more precise and precise, this article conducts a text structure study on the "keywords" obtained from the use of text tone and wording in online media reporting, hoping to further explore the degree of influence of external stimuli on individual decision-making. Based on this research, it is speculated that compared to excluding case data with keywords, the public's decision results will be more stringent when faced with descriptive keywords added to case facts. Meanwhile, this article also aims to investigate whether the public's perception of case facts is indeed controlled by media coverage through research. If so, does the tone and wording of online media coverage have a dominant impact on public decision-making during the writing process? Is the cognitive process presented by the public when facing a case based on a similar structure to the judge's cognitive model, with only differences in the "output" of information and "legal knowledge" (as shown in Figure 3)? If so, will the difference in sentencing between the two significantly decrease when the public is provided with the same type and quantity of case information as judges? From a constructive perspective of information processing, different paths of individual perceptual processing have different ways of influencing decision-making. Whether this theory can be supported by different decision-makers in specific sentencing environments, and what role network media information plays in it, are also questions that need to be studied.

On this basis, three hypotheses are proposed, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Experimental Hypotheses

This article will take the information processing pathway in cognitive psychology as the starting point to discuss and comprehensively analyze the results obtained from two experiments involving sentencing and punishment attitudes of judges and the public (as shown in Table 2 and Figure 4): Experiment 1, Judge sentencing experiment. By selecting representative regions and conducting a sampling survey on the responses of judges from different courts to three detailed case materials. Experiment 2, Public Decision Making Experiment. Firstly, conduct random sampling surveys on the public in different regions and compare their intuitive views on punishment. This serves as the demographic statistics for the experiment and serves as the basis for sub tests 1 and 2; Secondly, divide the case into two groups on average and provide one group of the public with identical dossier information as the sentencing research for judges, while only providing online media coverage of the case to the other group (Subtest 1); Finally, using "text keywords" as variables, by crawling the keywords obtained from controlling the "tone and wording" of describing case facts in online media reporting, one group of the public is provided with online media reporting after adding text keywords, and another group is provided with online media reporting after removing text keywords (Subtest 2). The commonalities and differences between the results generated by the two approaches are compared and analyzed.

Table 2 Comparison of sub experiments

Figure 4 Comparison of sub experiments

3.2 Judge Experiment: Judge's Sentencing Judgment

3.2.1 Experimental design and content

Although the deductive syllogism of formal logic is widely applied in law, from the current situation, judges still have a complex cognitive process even when facing relatively simple judicial decisions. In the constructive perspective of information processing, judges are rational decision-makers, which means that the behavior of judges in making judgments in the face of case facts not only involves simple legal application and deductive reasoning, but also includes a series of dynamic processing processes such as the conflict and negotiation between non regulatory norms and judicial norms, such as personal experience, value judgments, social consensus, etc. The purpose of Experiment One is to investigate the sentencing of judges in the three types of cases given, explore the differences within the judge group, and provide data support for comparing sentencing with the public and examining the differences between the two in the future. The research subjects in this study are judges from grassroots courts in different regions. In this survey, research materials will be distributed and collected in the form of questionnaires, both online and offline, and anonymized; A total of 226 questionnaires were distributed and 210 were collected, with a response rate of 88%. After preliminary screening, clearance, and other effective data processing, effective questionnaires accounted for 93% of the total number of collected questionnaires. Among them, there are 90 questionnaires from the North China region and 106 questionnaires from the Southeast region, with a relatively uniform distribution. Therefore, the overall distribution of the country can be inferred through mathematical statistical tools such as proportion conversion.

Legal phenomena arise from social phenomena, with heterogeneity and uncertainty. In addition, the scope of legal phenomena is very broad, making it impossible to study all subjects and difficult to conduct random sampling surveys without interference. So, the representativeness of the sample is crucial. The typical case materials selected by this research institute are the three types of criminal cases with the highest frequency of occurrence selected from the China Judgment Document Network from August 2014 to May 2018 through primary screening based on the cause of the case, namely intentional injury cases, fraud cases, smuggling, trafficking, and transportation of drugs cases. Based on these three types of cases, a secondary screening is conducted, and the final sample is presented as three detailed case materials. The representativeness of the sample obtained by this selection method is reflected in: (1) the selected case library is the world's largest judicial document network, and because it is a case recognized and publicly disclosed by various authoritative institutions of the Supreme People's Court, the sample has authority and breadth. (2) The time span of the selected cases covers various time periods from 2014 to present, and these three types of cases are involved in various parts of the country, with representativeness in terms of time and space. Due to the issue of the evidential power of evidence in the case files not being in line with the research purpose of this article, this article will not delve into the differences between strong and weak evidence case files, but will directly use case file materials with strong evidential power.

The focus of this article is to explore the cognitive differences between judges and the public regarding judgments, and the main punishments such as fixed-term imprisonment and life imprisonment can more intuitively highlight the differences between the two in facing case judgments. Therefore, this study focuses on the determination of the sentence term of the case by the two, while additional punishments such as fines and deprivation of political rights are excluded from the analysis of sentencing results.

The forms of questionnaire survey questions include selection, fill in the blank, and short answer. The case data used in the survey are all strong, authentic, and complete case files. The case data used includes the following three basic reasons: A. Intentional injury; B. Fraud; C. Smuggling, trafficking, and transporting drugs. In order to highlight the strong evidential characteristics of the three types of cases mentioned above, this article lists the evidence contained in the cases one by one in the form of tables, generating three types of case files (as shown in Table 3).

Note: x indicates that the evidence is included in the file, and o indicates that it is not included.

The research materials include the materials available in the general case file, such as the basic information of the defendant, registered residence registration materials, the process of case resolution and capture, witness testimony, the defendant's statement and defense, and the description of material evidence. Each case file contains a detailed introduction to the case and an explanation of the evidence. The listed evidence is true and sufficient, and the evidence is mutually reinforcing, forming a chain of evidence that is sufficient to prove the facts of the case in question. In order to compensate for the insufficient preparation of case materials by judges, the criminal law provisions corresponding to the three cases are attached at the end of the case file.

3.2.2 Experimental results

After basic statistical analysis of the survey data, the following results were obtained (as shown in Table 4 and Figure 5).

Table 4 Sentencing Results of Judges for Three Types of Cases (Unit: Years of imprisonment; N=196)

Figure 5 Judge's sentencing results

From the sentencing results of judges in Table 4, it can be seen that there is indeed a gap between the average sentencing of judges (in the actual state) and the statutory maximum sentence (in the expected state), which also reflects the exercise of judges' discretion. Moreover, there are significant differences in the judgments of judges on the same case. For the most serious cases of smuggling, trafficking, and transportation of drugs in research, the average sentencing period is 16.03 years, and the gap between judges is the largest, nearly 10 years, with a fluctuation in their judgments of about 4 years. But in terms of China's criminal trial rules, the collegial panel is the basic trial organization for people's courts to try cases. In actual judgments, if there are differences in the trial of a case by the collegial panel, the principle of minority obeying the majority shall be followed for handling. However, the opinions put forward by a minority cannot be ignored and should be fully recorded in the evaluation records. Therefore, it can be foreseen that the thoughtful exploration of case situations among judges will have a convergent impact on judgments, thereby narrowing the differences between judges to a certain extent.

3.3 Public experiment: public decision-making cognition

3.3.1 Background of decision-making cognition experiment: A survey of public attitudes towards punishment

This study analyzes the general attitudes of the public towards punishment through a survey and applies it to the subsequent stage of research, from a macro perspective, to incorporate the conclusions obtained through sentencing research (Experiment 2) into a broader perspective.

In Experiment 2, a total of 1379 survey questionnaires were distributed and collected to the public nationwide through a combination of online and offline methods. The survey included basic information such as gender, age, education level, occupation, and degree of media influence; The main content includes the level of trust in China's criminal justice and the views of judges on sentencing, as well as knowledge and interest in crime and law enforcement. Specific issues are shown in Table 5.

Table 5: Survey questionnaire on public attitudes towards punishment

3.3.1.1 The public's trust in China's criminal justice system and their views on sentencing judges

In the sampling survey, as shown in Figure 6, 70% of the respondents believed that the sentencing was relatively lenient, while only 30% expressed uncertainty or held the opposite opinion. However, overall, people's views on judges and trust in the judiciary are not negative, with less than 10% of the public expressing distrust in China's criminal justice, and up to 88% of the public believing that judges are fair in applying the law to try cases under certain circumstances.

Figure 6: Survey results of public attitudes towards punishment (1)

3.3.1.2 The level of public understanding and interest in basic knowledge of crime and law enforcement

According to the sample survey, as shown in Figure 7, 67% of the public understand the information of criminal cases through the Internet and other emerging media, which is consistent with the environmental background of the Internet media era that this article is replacing. When asked about public interest in criminal cases, less than 10% of the public indicated that they did not pay attention to the reporting of criminal incidents, which provides a realistic background for the comparison of sentencing results between case files and online media reports in Experiment 2. This study also examined the level of understanding of criminal penalties among the surveyed public. Among them, up to 90% of the respondents indicated that they were not familiar with or generally understood the penalties. When asked about the specific penalties for certain crimes (Table 5, Question 7), up to 78% of respondents indicated that their understanding of the penalties was vague, regardless of the type of crime involved. In summary, the total number of respondents who indicate complete or relatively clear understanding of the punishment is not optimistic. This also intuitively demonstrates the gap between the public and judges in their understanding of internal legal knowledge, judicial procedures, and the resulting legal thinking logic.

Figure 7: Results of a survey on public attitudes towards punishment (2)

3.3.2 Decision making experiment content: Public sentencing cognition experiment

Regarding specific issues, it is often not necessary to verify the definition and understanding of the audience, but to directly measure the dependent variable based on the audience's attitude or evaluation of the problem. Therefore, this study collected sentencing data from the public on the three types of cases given, compared the data results of Experiment 2a and Experiment 1, to examine the differences between the public and judges, and analyzed the differences in sentencing cognition of the public on the same case with different amounts of information.

The strong evidence case files included in this study were randomly distributed online and offline, while online media reports on case questionnaires were mainly distributed randomly online. About 2100 respondents wrote down their opinions on the judgment results for feedback, and there was no significant difference in the number of strong evidence case files and feedback reported by online media.

Both the strong evidence case file and the online media report case questionnaire have two types of question types: multiple-choice and fill in the blank. Similar to the judge's, this article only studies the public's sentencing decision on the sentence of the case, excluding other punishment methods. After browsing the details of the case, participants will see the statutory maximum penalty and relevant legal provisions related to the case, and then be asked to make sentencing judgments.

The survey questionnaire includes basic information of the respondents and information on the investigation case, which mainly includes the following content.

(1) Three case files with strong supporting evidence. These case files are the same as the case studying the sentencing of judges (Experiment 1), which includes three case facts: intentional injury cases, fraud cases, and smuggling, trafficking, and transportation of drugs cases. Considering the differences in professional knowledge between judges and the general public, the questionnaire provides a brief explanation of some legal terms.

(2) Based on the online media coverage of the three cases mentioned above. The online media report was written by three research members with a background in journalism and certain insights into law. The content of the report is required to be unbiased and non subjective, and it is only different from the strong evidence case files mentioned above in terms of information content. It mainly reflects the defendant's criminal history, criminal facts and circumstances, and the situation of the victims.

(3) Online media coverage after adding and removing text keywords. Due to the fact that the amount of information is a general concept, and textual information is usually structured through keywords, based on the three online media reports mentioned above, descriptive vocabulary that affects the determination of case facts will be captured as keywords. The standard for keyword crawling is mainly based on controlling the tone and wording of the text in the process of describing the facts of the case.

3.4 Public experimental survey results

3.4.1 Subtest 1 Survey Results

Table 6 shows the sentencing results of the public. As there are many cases where the public sentenced the above three cases to death penalty and life imprisonment, this article includes the above two types of punishment measures in extreme punishment when processing data, and also records these two types of punishment methods when processing other sentencing data.

Table 6 Sentencing outcomes of three cases under the conditions of strong public evidence and online media coverage (unit: years of imprisonment)

3.4.2 Subtest 2 Investigation Results

Table 7 shows the decision results of the same group of survey subjects on two different types of case data before and after reading text keyword adaptations. The questionnaire is designed with multiple-choice questions, and the answers are set to several sentencing intervals. During data processing, the middle value of each interval is taken for calculation. In order to study the size of the public's punishment judgments when facing the same case with different expressions, the paired sample T-test method is used here, which compares the mean values of the two types of data obtained in the above experiment. The results are shown in Figure 8. Before and after the adaptation of smuggling, trafficking, and transportation drug cases, there is a significant difference in the public's judgment of the defendant Wen's punishment at a 95% confidence level (p-value). In addition, the difference in the public's judgment of the defendant's punishment before and after the adaptation of the case is not significant. But in Table 7, it can be seen that the average judgment of the public on the punishment that the defendant should receive is basically higher after the case is adapted than before.

Table 7: The sentencing results of three cases reported by the public before and after the adaptation in online media (unit: years in prison; N=169)

Figure 8: The sentencing results of the public on three cases before and after the adaptation of online media coverage (error line represents standard deviation)

From the results, it can be seen that in Subtest 1, whether it was the provision of detailed dossier information identical to that of the judge or the inclusion of keywords in online media reports, the public's decision-making results were more stringent compared to less informative online media reports.

4. Comparison and Discovery: Experimental Results of Decision Making between Judges and the Public

This article adopts a research method that combines empirical and research methods to comprehensively analyze the relevant studies mentioned above. Among them, Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 were both designed as random experiments, and were randomly distributed to judges and the public, respectively. For Experiment 2, in the first set of tests, a portion of the public were provided with three detailed and strong evidence file materials, while another portion of the public was provided with online media coverage of the case, with the aim of testing whether the public would make completely different judgments when facing case materials with different amounts of information; In the second set of tests, a portion of the public were provided with online media reports that included factual descriptive keywords, while another portion of the public was provided with online media reports that excluded keywords, with the aim of testing whether the public would make completely different judgments when facing texts with different tones and wording but the same case. When dealing with Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, the second indirect research method is adopted, which is to comprehensively analyze the results of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2a, with the aim of testing whether the public and judges will still make completely different judgments when facing case data with identical information content; The overall analysis of demographic statistics results and Experiment 2 aims to test whether there is a positive correlation between public trust in the judiciary and the judgments made when facing real cases.

In order to study the size of punishment judgments made by judges and the public when facing the same case, this paper introduces the idea of non parametric testing (Kolmogorov Smirnov hypothesis test) in mathematical statistics, and constructs a model accordingly.

4.1 The cognitive differences between the public and judges under equal amounts of information

In cases of intentional injury, faced with similar case information as the judge, regardless of which defendant is involved, and whether it is the sentencing result or the degree of fluctuation in sentencing, the public's decision-making result is clearly more important than the judge. Due to the lack of intuitive differences between the online media reports before and after adding text keywords from the box plot, in order to reduce data errors, this article only presents the decision-making results of the public after reading the online media reports themselves and strong evidence case materials. When the interviewed public only learned about the brief situation of the case from online media reports, they adopted stricter decision-making outcomes than those who were provided with strong evidence of the case file, which also verified the hypotheses made earlier in this study. There is no significant difference in the terms of sentence received between defendants A, C, and B. The reason why the public was asked to make decisions based on strong evidence case materials is that their sentencing results were slightly higher than those of defendants A and C is that in strong evidence case materials, this experiment provided a detailed explanation of the surrender circumstances of defendants A and C, and defendant B did not surrender. However, in online media reports, only one sentence was mentioned for the surrender circumstances of defendants A and C, which resulted in no significant fluctuation in the sentencing of the public based on online media reports.

In fraud cases, when faced with similar case information as judges, the public's sentencing is relatively lenient compared to judges. This is contrary to the situation in the previous intentional injury case. When the interviewed public only learned about the brief situation of the case from online media reports, they would be sentenced more harshly than those participants who were provided with strong evidence in the case files, which once again verified the hypothesis before this experiment. As mentioned earlier, there is a slight difference between the crime of fraud, which belongs to property crimes, and the crime of intentional injury, which belongs to personal crimes, as well as the crime of smuggling, trafficking, and transporting drugs. The leniency of property crimes has become a special phenomenon in this study.

In cases of smuggling, trafficking, and transportation of drugs, the sentencing standards of judges are more consistent than the first two types of cases, with a difference of four (IQR) of 0, indicating a lower degree of data dispersion, so the occurrence of "outliers" is normal. When faced with similar case information as the judge, regardless of which defendant is involved, the public's decision-making results are more stringent compared to the judge. This is the same result as the intentional injury case mentioned above. When the interviewed public only learned about the brief situation of the case from online media reports, they would have more stringent decision-making results than those participants who were provided with strong evidence of the case files, which once again evaluated and verified the hypotheses made before this experiment. There is no significant difference in the sentence received between the defendants Wen, Wang, and Yin. The reason why the public's sentencing results for the defendants Wen are slightly higher than those for Wang and Yin based on strong evidence in the case files is that in the strong evidence case files, this experiment provides a detailed explanation and distinction of the defendant's drug trafficking quantity and circumstances. After clarifying the sentencing standards for such crimes, the interviewed public will treat each defendant differently based on different circumstances. However, in online media reports, there is no detailed explanation of the different drug trafficking scenarios of the defendants, resulting in no significant fluctuation in the sentencing of each defendant by the public based on online media reports.

4.2 The superficial impact of textual information variables on public sentencing

In the experiment using information text as a variable, the results showed that when the public only learned about the case situation from strong evidence files, they would adopt more rational sentencing decisions than those who read online media reports, which was confirmed in all three cases. According to Table 7 and Figure 8, the sentencing made by the public when provided with three detailed dossier materials is more severe than when reported in online media, and when reported in online media with subjective biased vocabulary, the latter's decision results are more stringent, which verifies our previous hypothesis. In cases of intentional injury, the sentencing results of the public are very similar when the case file is limited, and the fluctuation is relatively small; When reported by online media, the sentencing of the public is relatively stable and there is no significant fluctuation. In drug cases, the public's judgments and penalties based on case files are also very similar, with little fluctuation; There is a significant difference in the duration of judgments and penalties based on online media reports, so their volatility is high. In fraud cases, the public's sentencing based on news reports is also heavier than sentencing based on case files. This result may indicate that a major factor in bringing public sentencing decisions closer to judges is that this information belongs to the authoritative "ruler" of the professional field, and the range of fluctuations in reconstructing public cognitive attitudes tends to be closer to professionals in that field.

Among the defendants A and C in the intentional injury case, those who were required to read strong evidence case materials were sentenced to an average sentence of 4 years by the public, while those who read online media reports were sentenced to 7 years. The reason for this difference may be that the online media coverage in the case did not provide a detailed explanation of the surrender circumstances of the two defendants, resulting in the respondents ignoring this statutory sentencing circumstance. In fact, from the strong evidence of the case files, it can be seen that the voluntary surrender behavior of defendants A and C is an important circumstance to consider in sentencing.

For the defendants Wen, Wang, and Yin in the smuggling, trafficking, and transportation of drugs case, those who were required to read online media reports after removing text keywords were sentenced to an average sentence of 13 years, while those who read online media reports with added text keywords were sentenced to 14 years. The reason for this difference may be that the original online media coverage of this case did not clearly state that 10 grams of the drugs smuggled by the three individuals were secretly hidden by the defendant Wen without the knowledge of Wang and Yin, while the online media coverage with key words added to the text provided a clear explanation. This makes it easy for participants to be misled into believing that the severity of the crimes committed by the three defendants is equal. In fact, from the detailed case files, it can be seen that the severity of the crimes committed by the three individuals is not the same. The above experimental data indicates that there is no significant difference in the sentencing scale of the public based on different texts.

Due to the broad meaning of the term "information", in order to better discuss it, this article needs to make a certain distinction between external stimulus information and implicit experience (information). From the perspective of information processing, information constitutes the "context" in which the public makes judgments. In testing, examining the context in which the public is situated not only provides external information, but also includes one's own perception of the social environment in which it operates. In the experiment, significant information variables are the textual variables presented in describing the case. Our experiment demonstrates that external textual stimuli do not have a decisive impact on public decision-making. In the game between external stimuli and individual implicit experiences, the individual's implicit factors play a decisive role in making decision results. This means that external stimuli exhibit lower levels of information activation when influencing the public's cognition and judgment of cases, but this information activation is constrained by high-level information recognition such as personal beliefs, expectations, and memories. That is, when the public makes their own sentencing judgments on case data, their behavior reflects the characteristics of contextual effects, while their implicit experience provides a more stable decision-making influence.

After explaining the results of the two tests in Experiment 2, we have received responses to the other two hypotheses. Hypothesis II uses information text as a variable, and the public's decision-making outcomes on the same case are different when reading different texts (strong evidence case files and online media reports, online media reports with added keywords, and online media reports with removed keywords), but the differences are not significant. Hypothesis III uses text keywords in online media reporting as variables, and the public's decision-making results on the same case are positively correlated with the number of text keywords when reading different texts (including online media reports with added text keywords and those without keywords).

Of course, the experimental design of this study inevitably has certain shortcomings. This study neglected strict control over the differences in information content between online reports and case files for the same case. In the experimental design stage, strict classification and explanation of case information types and strength characteristics were not carried out according to the evidence graph shown in Table 3. Instead, the file data was filtered based on the general mode of online news reporting in judicial cases, simulating the general online news reporting of three related cases, with the intention of restoring the most authentic cognitive context of "public opinion trial". Therefore, directly leading to the discovery and discussion of experimental results in the later stage, this study is unable to discuss what kind of information has an impact on public decision-making and how it affects its internal information cognitive processing mechanism. At the same time, this study cannot exhaust the various information factors that affect public decision-making. It only provides preliminary control over the amount of information and the tone and wording in the information. Moreover, this study cannot provide a more in-depth discussion on how these information factors affect their internal information cognitive processing mechanisms.

5. Discussion: Information Processing Theory and Decision Making of Judges and the Public

5.1 Examination and Reflection on Information Processing Theory

Due to the rapid development of communication tools in modern society, information exhibits characteristics such as rapid dissemination speed and wide coverage, so the public will quickly obtain a portion of information about cases. The emergence of the Internet has made information appear in the form of "fragmentation", resulting in the public switching back and forth between various links to browse information, unable to focus on in-depth thinking for a long time. Meanwhile, the excessive amount of information makes it difficult for the public to screen useful information. In addition, technological algorithms may also manipulate the browsing process, greatly affecting the public's rational judgment of events. Therefore, it is necessary to predict the public's reactions in specific events through information processing theory, and narrow the gap between the public and judges' sense of justice through appropriate methods. In the constructive perspective of information processing, decision-making, as a choice of conclusion or solution, inevitably involves the experience and judgment of the subject, that is, selection as an integrated process. Viewing the sentencing process as a process of achieving expected goals is in line with the public's expectations of judicial fairness. Therefore, the public needs to integrate and participate in their own cognition and expectations in the process of guiding possible outcomes based on existing case data, that is, the cognitive processing process of transforming a given situation into a target situation.

The existing conclusions prompt us to re-examine the information representation process of cognitive processing in cognitive psychology. Input, processing, and output are the most basic cognitive processing modes. In previous studies, information was often placed in the input stage, viewed as external stimuli, and more attention was paid to the study of perceptual processing "dark boxes". However, this also resulted in a vague positioning of the impact of information texts on cognitive decision-making, making it difficult to determine whether this information is effective for the audience.

Through experiments, this article believes that "information symbols" need to be viewed as a holistic and structural representation process. There are two dimensions of research orientation on the impact of external information, or knowledge on cognition in decision-making contexts. One is the information itself, which involves the effectiveness of activating and recognizing textual information content; The other is the influence of information processing paths. This means that information is no longer processed in the "dark box" of perceptual processing solely based on the stimulation of information flow. Information also affects the choice of processing methods in the recognition process, and different perceptual processing methods can give information different interpretations, thereby "outputting" different cognitive decisions. This allows us to pay more attention to the relationship between information and individual cognitive structures. The information factor is no longer seen as a factor outside of a simple cognitive structure. It interacts with the individual's existing experiential knowledge and schema structure in the representation process of symbols, which is implicit and has a certain structural cognitive processing process. By examining the mutual influence between external stimuli and internal processing structures, we believe that cognitive processing needs to be studied and considered within the broader processing perspective of "information symbols". We can see from the experimental results that implicit perceptual processing rules become the key process of knowledge representation, while external stimuli are integrated into the processing rules to complete their recognition and processing processes, thereby dominating individual decision-making.

After examining the integrated view of information processing theory, it was found that it has both completeness and shortcomings. As previously pointed out in this article, in more complex contexts, the relationship between external information stimuli and internal experience, knowledge and individual behavior has not been further explained. Although judges can use a complete set of information processing theories to explain their cognitive decision-making process, in public experiments, whether it is changing the level of detail in the text or controlling for subjective keywords in the text, the public's decision-making results will never change. Therefore, based on information processing theories, it cannot explain the reasons for this insignificant difference. More specifically, it is unclear whether external information and internal experience have a dominant information recognition pathway in certain contexts, and how the recognition of this information stimulus affects individual internal representation, thereby influencing individual behavioral decision-making. On the basis of theoretical applicability, it is particularly urgent to provide explanations for individual behavioral cognitive structures through consideration and analysis in specific contexts. At the same time, the theoretical framework of information processing does not pay attention to various factors that may affect individual processing stages, as well as the implicit differences between judges and the public. Based on this theory, the results obtained may have significant errors from the actual situation. By incorporating many factors that affect reality, examining the shortcomings and deficiencies of the theory, and combining experimental results, a possible development direction is provided. This is the vitality of the evergreen tree of theory.

5.2 The Decision Mechanism of Judges and the Public under Equal Text Information

In Experiment 1, the results showed that regardless of the case, the standard deviation of sentencing for judges was relatively small, indicating the stability and professionalism of judges as a professional community in judicial decision-making. At the same time, the study confirmed the cognitive model of judges based on the framework of information processing theory obtained earlier (as shown in Figure 2). According to our cognitive model of judge thinking, after the judge grasps the "key information" of the case facts during the "attention" stage, in order to meet the goal of making a reasonable and fair judgment, the individual behavior decision-making mode (production system) is not singular. In a complex cognitive context, individuals need to activate more production systems in order to engage in behavior that satisfies their goals. In the "coding" stage, judges have accumulated a lot of trial experience in the field of work to internalize the organization into a sentencing model. This model includes the process from problem representation of cases (case types, sentencing circumstances...) to procedural adjustment (matching and comparing similar cases tried before, analyzing the differences and differences between cases...). Its "rules" are mainly the processing of procedural knowledge (as shown in Figure 9).

Figure 9 Information processing flowchart during the encoding stage

However, this does not mean that the judge's judgment behavior is a mechanical input and output, and legal arguments are highly interrelated and complex, making it obviously impossible to solve these problems through a series of rule-based methods. As experts in the legal field, judges need to reconstruct the facts of the case and seek cognitive balance in this process. Cognitive balance requires judges to reach a consensus on reliability and effectiveness. From a legal perspective, reliability is related to opportunities, biases, confidence, etc., or from an extralegal perspective, it also includes variables that affect the allocation of reliability and effectiveness. These variables are personal characteristics of reliability. Due to long-term legal training, judges have a strong sense of professional community and high legal literacy, so they are not too influenced by their "free judgment" in the sentencing decision-making process. But for the general public, the processing of background information provided belongs to the representation process of declarative knowledge, and the "rule" processing knowledge it relies on is not mainly based on expert knowledge in the legal field. It will use its inherent knowledge structure, internal emotions, educational background, community environment, life experience, etc. as a substitute for the judge's inherent legal knowledge, judicial procedures, and the resulting legal thinking logic, in order to promote the achievement of its judgment goals.

In specific sentencing situations, this article views the public as a group role with knowledge and experience in the legal field that differs from judges. Due to the dual differences between these two groups in the decision-making process in reality - the difference between external information and implicit experience (information), fundamentally, exploring the public's cognitive bias between judicial identification and judge case judgments requires an explanation of the cognitive differences between "novices" and "experts". Although exploring the internal differences in cognitive thinking between the two is beyond the scope of this experiment, this article still attempts to explain it through theoretical research in the relevant field of cognitive psychology. The decision-making path of judges tends to adopt an "expert perspective" to view facts: the gaze flows between facts and norms. This thinking pattern of "starting from norms" is a concrete manifestation of the judge's thinking in the context of legal decision-making through the information processing path. However, this experiment also shows that when the public makes their own sentencing judgments based on case data, external textual information cannot play a decisive role in their decision-making. Therefore, the reason for the difference in sentencing judgments between judges and the public regarding the same case is the high-level decision-making thinking difference between the two. This reason turns the focus of this article to the research of implicit cognitive differences between individuals in academia, and further explores them on this basis. At the same time, this article also found that information processing theory did not pay attention to the implicit differences between judges and the public, which requires this article to appeal to the explanation of the implicit differences between individuals.

In the moral reasoning theory of American child development psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, the development of individual moral judgment requires six stages. And as they enter adulthood, their moral reasoning enters the postconventional level of morality. The moral standards of people at this level are self selected, and their choices take precedence over abstract concepts such as justice, freedom, and values. Starting from this, judges, due to long-term legal professional training, will form a more cautious and rational view of justice based on moral standards, which is seen as appearing detached from society. For the public, although they can obtain a large amount of legal information through communication media, without direct experience, they still mobilize their consistent nerves and emotions when facing legal cases. Therefore, the justice concept formed by the public based on their own moral principles of choice has an emotional representation. The different views of justice between the public and judges when facing cases are an important reason for the implicit differences between the two.

By comparing the results of the three experimental groups mentioned above, this article found that although the variable of case text information has a guiding effect on public cognition, it is exactly the opposite of traditional thinking structures, that is, external text information cannot play a decisive role in individual decision-making. This also reflects that the abundance or scarcity of case text information cannot fundamentally bridge the gap between public cognition and judge judgment. In Experiment 2, the study provided identical dossier data to the public and judges who participated in the test. However, according to the comparison of experimental results, there was no significant change in the decision-making results of the public under "equal" and "concise" information, and the average value of text variables in individual cases only differed by 0.4 years. This indicates that compared to "concise" information, the public has not effectively utilized the "equivalent" information after changes, as in information processing theory, the "attention" and "coding" stages are the two stages in which individuals transform external information and internalize it in their thinking. Applying the above research results into information processing theory reflects that no matter how external information changes, it does not effectively process external information in the stages of attention and encoding. In the experiment, the text variable, as an external stimulus, plays a general recognition role in the public's cognitive process. For the general public, the text variable applied to the legal profession cannot participate in its higher-level perceptual processing due to its low processability, so it does not contribute to direct behavioral effects. Therefore, this article infers that the effectiveness of information stimuli in special fields is related to the individual's cognitive processing "rules" in that field. If an individual lacks generative rules and knowledge in that field, the impact of information variables in that field on individual decision-making is minimal in the case decision-making process. Therefore, from the perspective of information processing theory, the public has deviated in the initial text conversion stage, that is, compared to judges, the public cannot form a complete cognitive process based on the framework of information processing theory (as shown in Figure 10).

Figure 10 Public cognition process diagram under information processing

6. Conclusion

This article provides a new perspective on sentencing decision-making behavior from the perspective of cognitive psychology, broadening the explanatory dimensions of the perceptual processing of judges. It also to some extent provides a new understanding of some unresolved issues in cognitive science theory and proposes new insights, bringing new inspiration to further research and integration of the two disciplines.

The conflict between public opinion and the judiciary is a byproduct of formal rationality and the rule of law, and its causes lie not only in the attributes and operating rules of the judiciary itself, but also in the mechanisms of social opinion formation. However, we can also examine this conflict from a positive perspective and recognize the need to call for a more closely connected image of judicial decision-makers with social connections. The formation of judicial authority is not dominated by its own professional barriers, but by the accumulation of rule of law culture, the belief of judges in a professional community, and the practical guarantee of the judicial system, which are combined to obtain effectiveness in the social environment. This requires judicial decision-making to carefully consider various aspects and establish a method in judicial discretion that can communicate facts and law, connect justice and society, and integrate tradition and modernity.

In the process of reflecting on China's judicial practice from the perspective of legal realism, this article has no intention of challenging the authority of the judiciary. On the contrary, it is from the perspective of expectations for judicial fairness that this article urgently hopes to understand the true thoughts and attitudes of the public, and to obtain guidance on the ideal picture of society by drawing on the theories and perspectives of other social sciences. The cognitive process of an individual involves numerous variables, and currently, the field of cognitive science cannot establish a model that covers all cognitive structures. Faced with this practical problem, this article is temporarily unable to achieve a comprehensive framework and analysis of the overall structure of cognitive processes. Therefore, this study is limited to the sole variable of text information content, and preliminarily controls the tone and wording within it, without considering how much weight a specific type of text information has on public judicial cognitive differences, as well as rigorously dividing and further analyzing psychological factors such as anger, sympathy, and pity. At the same time, this article realizes the limitations of using only textual information as external physical stimuli. In this context, it turns to using information processing path theory to conclude that the dominant factor in individual decision-making in specific environments is the internal cognitive program processing of individuals. Therefore, it is concluded that the fundamental reason for the cognitive divergence between judges and the public is the different internal information processing paths of the two. Based on the experimental results and the required comparative analysis of the experimental data blocks, continuously try and transform the most suitable scientific and mathematical analysis methods, and draw the primary conclusion that external information stimuli are not the main reason for the differences in judgments between judges and the public.

In the context of diversified communication, blindly following public opinion pressure and public opinion will greatly weaken judicial authority. However, ignoring the connection between justice and society can hinder the path of public recognition for judicial fairness, further threatening its authority. Based on this survey and related research, it can be concluded that the psychological identification of the public with judicial authority is a cultural construction and of great significance. The research also shows that the mass media is not always an "uninvited guest" in the formation process of judicial public identity at the level of information dissemination. On the contrary, contemporary media researchers have high expectations for the possible formation of the "public sphere" called by the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas in the process of mass communication. Similarly, the Internet can also provide ideas for its promotion of public recognition of justice: building a dialogue mechanism so that professional judges and the public can communicate, reach consensus and mutual recognition through discussion and debate, and achieve the goal of value unity. Enriching the public's legal knowledge and improving their legal thinking to a certain extent, so that the internal processing network of public cognition tends towards the cognitive structure of judicial adjudicators. The author hopes that society can attach importance to the popularization and education of the value and thinking of the rule of law, promote the bridging of the gap between the public and judges, optimize the public's legal education channels, play the role of new media in legal education, and promote public participation in legal practice. The cognitive gap between the public and judges cannot be eliminated, but even so, judicial decisions should still face the causes of the gap, establish a legitimate procedure, balance the procedural communication mechanism of the judiciary, enhance the reasoning of judicial documents, and achieve cognitive reconciliation. This will be one of the important paths to resolve public opinion risks in judicial decision-making.