Biased Evaluation of Pain and Suffering Damages

Studies have documented racial and gender-based disparities in civil jury awards. Legal scholars have raised concerns that biases might be especially prevalent in awarding pain and suffering damages, which are particularly open-ended and difficult to estimate. We contribute to this body of literature by providing experimental evidence of a causal relationship between the perceived race and gender of victims, the perception of their pain and suffering, and the damages awarded to them. We focus on two types of injuries: head and knee injuries, on the intersection of gender and race and on related evaluations of victims’ behavior. We find that people perceive the pain and suffering of White victims to be greater than that of Black victims afflicted by the same head injury. The most alarming finding of our experiment is that Black male victims receive significantly lower amounts of damages for pain and suffering associated with both head and knee injuries compared to all other victims. By contrast, Black female victims are not penalized compared to White women and men, and receive significantly higher amounts of damages for their pain and suffering associated with both head and knee injuries compared to Black men.