This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Talking to Strangers" by Malcolm Gladwell. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Who is Sendhil Mullainathan? What were his research findings regarding judges’ bail decisions?
Sendhil Mullainathan is a professor of Computation and Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago. In 2017, Mullainathan and colleagues conducted a study about judges’ ability to predict defendants’ likelihood of committing another crime. What did they find out?
Keep reading for more about the experiment Mullainathan ran and his findings.
The Mullainathan Experiment
On a typical Thursday in Brooklyn, Judge Solomon was presiding over his courtroom. His primary responsibility for the day was arraignments. He had to see every defendant who had been arrested in the last 24 hours, look at their criminal history, listen to the testimony of both the prosecution and the defense, and then decide if the defendant would be offered bail and the chance to be released from custody. In short, Judge Solomon had to look a perfect stranger in the eye, assess his character, and decide if he deserved his freedom. But does looking a person in the eye actually help you judge his nature?
A team from the University of Chicago, led by Sendhil Mullainathan, set out to answer that question. The experiment went like this:
- Mullainathan gathered the data of all 554,689 defendants that went through the NYC courts from 2008-2013. They found that 400,000 of those defendants had been released by the judges that presided over their arraignments.
- Mullainathan built a computer with an artificial intelligence system.
- The computer was fed the data of the same 554,689 cases. It then made its own list of the 400,000 defendants least likely to commit a crime while out on bail.
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Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Malcolm Gladwell's "Talking to Strangers" at Shortform .
Here's what you'll find in our full Talking to Strangers summary :
- Why we don't understand strangers
- How to talk to strangers in a cautious way so you don't get fooled
- How Hitler deceived so many world leaders
