Morally questionable tactics: Negotiations between district attorneys and public defenders

A questionnaire study about bargaining tactics was conducted among 163 publ ic defenders (PDs) and district attorneys (DAs) in the criminal justice sys tem. The authors hypothesized that PDs (defensive roles) would perceive que stionable tactics to be more appropriate than would DAs (offensive roles), that PDs and DAs would elevate their approval of questionable tactics for c ounteraggression purposes, and that PDs would elevate their approval for co unteraggression to a greater extent than would DAs. Results supported these hypotheses. The authors also examined the basis of the status quo bias, be cause previous status quo bias studies always confounded power with defensi ve role. After testing four status quo bias hypotheses, results suggested t hat, contrary to previous explanations, a defender-challenger frame-work so metimes provides a better account of the status quo bias than does a power framework.