Credibility Assessment Under Uncertainty: Bias, Evidence, and Reliability in Legal Decision-Making

Abstract

Legal decision-making often requires assessing credibility under incomplete information, time pressure, and contested narratives. This article examines how cognitive biases, narrative coherence preferences, and perceived confidence can distort evidence evaluation and testimony assessment. It synthesizes doctrinal standards relating to proof, credibility, and reasoning transparency with psychological findings on memory reliability, confidence-accuracy dissociations, and heuristic judgment. The article proposes a set of practical safeguards aimed at improving reliability, including structured reasoning prompts, credibility factor checklists, and communication standards that separate factual inference from narrative persuasion. The central claim is that credibility assessment improves when institutions treat uncertainty explicitly rather than implicitly. The proposed approach is designed to strengthen decision quality and defensibility, particularly in high-stakes contexts where error costs are substantial and public legitimacy is fragile.