Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Psychology evidence is an unreliable source of information about any given claimant. How can it help decision-makers to make good decisions?
Psychology evidence paints a population-level picture. This kind of evidence can help scientists to make reliable generalizations about population-level effects. But when it comes to making predictions about individuals, even when the individual is a member of the studied population, “reasoning from the group to an individual case presents considerable challenges.”1 Moreover, the field of psychology has long focused on some populations and overlooked others.2 Refugee claimants may well belong to un- or understudied populations. They may also be outliers in the data for many other reasons. As a result, psychology evidence is an unreliable source of information about how any given claimant would think or act.3
A psychological response that is remarkable in the studied populations may be unremarkable for someone like the claimant. If a decision-maker (wrongly) concludes from these studies that a claimant’s testimony is too surprising to be true, they will make one kind of mistake: rejecting true testimony on the basis of unreliable evidence.
At the same time, psychology evidence might show that, among the studied populations, a response is generally unremarkable. If so, this evidence may challenge a decision-maker’s assumption that it is too surprising to be believed. In light of this evidence, why would it be surprising for the claimant – or anyone – to think or act this way? If, in fact, this response would be remarkable for someone like the claimant, this reasoning may lead the decision-maker to make a different kind of mistake: accepting false testimony because, on the evidence before them, there is no convincing reason to reject it.
In a refugee status decision, the latter is not only the less harmful mistake – it is precisely what good legal reasoning looks like.4 By making clear when psychological responses are unremarkable – and not when they are remarkable – the Baseline Paper Series facilitates the proper use of psychology evidence in this high-stakes context.5
Why is this called the ‘Baseline’ Paper Series?
The Baseline Paper Series makes clear for decision-makers when certain ways of thinking or acting are unremarkable, unsurprising, unexceptional. It identifies psychological responses that, according to the best available evidence, are ‘well within the normal range of human experience,’ all else being equal. Each of the papers in this series sets a baseline: “a known measure”; “a set of critical observations or data used for comparison” “a starting point.”6 They describe a set of responses that represent neither the lower nor the upper limit of the ‘normal range’ – neither the floor nor the ceiling – but instead a point somewhere well within that range.
As such, this evidence will not help decision-makers to identify responses that are remarkable: outside of the normal range. Legally and logically, these papers cannot support a finding that a given claimant would (or would not) have thought or acted in a certain way. Instead, they may help decision-makers to recognize when there is no reason to assume that a claimant would (or would not) have thought or acted in a certain way. They may make clear, in other words, that a decision-maker needs to rethink or else better support the conclusion that a psychological response is too improbable to be believed.
What makes a psychological response ‘unremarkable’?
A psychological response is unremarkable if, in the populations that have been studied, it falls within the range of normal experience. In such a population, we would expect to see some people respond this way, simply because of the variety of ways that people think and act. Even if only a relatively small proportion of the population would respond this way, we expect that this kind of response will simply happen – to otherwise unexceptional people under otherwise unexceptional circumstances.
What does it mean for a response to be unremarkable ‘all else being equal’?
Each scenario in the Baseline Paper Series describes a way of thinking or acting that is unremarkable on its face. Knowing more about the event, the person, or their context could suggest reasons why this outcome would be more (or even less) remarkable. ‘All else being equal’ means, however, that no other relevant information is available. On these facts alone, this outcome would be ‘well within the normal range.’
References
1 D L Faigman, J Monahan & C Slobogin, “Group to individual (G2i) inference in scientific expert testimony” (2014) 81 The University of Chicago Law Review 417-480 at 420.
2 Joseph Henrich, Steven J Heine & Ara Norenzayan, “The weirdest people in the world?” (2010) 33 Behavioural and Brain Sciences 61-83, discussion 83-135; M Muthukrishna, A V Bell, J Henrich, C M Curtin, A Gedranovich, J McInerney, & B Thue, “Beyond Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) Psychology: Measuring and Mapping Scales of Cultural and Psychological Distance” (2020) 31 Psychological Science 678–701; T Pollet & TK Saxton, “How Diverse Are the Samples Used in the Journals Evolution & Human Behavior and Evolutionary Psychology?” (2019) 5 Evolutionary Psychological Science 357–368; MS Rad, AJ Martingano & J Ginges, “Toward a Psychology of Homo Sapiens: Making Psychological Science More Representative of the Human Population” (2018) 115 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 11401–11405.
3 H Evans Cameron, “Principled Asymmetry: Putting Psychology Research Evidence Before Refugee Status Decision-makers” (under review, 2026).
4 H Evans Cameron, Refugee Law’s Fact-Finding Crisis: Truth, Risk, and the Wrong Mistake (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
5 H Evans Cameron, “Principled Asymmetry: Putting Psychology Research Evidence Before Refugee Status Decision-makers” (under review, 2026).
6 Merriam-Webster Dictionary: ‘baseline (noun)’: accessed Sep 6 2026 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/baseline.
7 H Evans Cameron, “Principled Asymmetry: Putting Psychology Research Evidence Before Refugee Status Decision-makers” (under review, 2026); H Evans Cameron, “Reasoning with Probability in Truth and Deception Judgments in Refugee Status Decision-making” (in progress).