Murder By Default - Making Default Choices

                                                 

Default options are pre-set courses of action that take effect if nothing is specified by the decision maker. In computing the default option is the option offered by a system, which will always be followed except when explicitly altered.



In life the default option is the choice of action or mode of behaviour that will always be followed except when a different choice is made. For women, smiling is the default option. For men, the default is not smiling.



In a choice context, a default refers to that option which choosers end up with if they do not make an active choice. This notion is similar to the one in computer science where defaults are settings or values that are automatically assigned outside of user intervention. Setting the default affects how likely people end up with an option. This is called the default effect. More precisely, it refers to changes in the probability that an agent chooses a particular option when it is set as a default as opposed to the situation where this option has not been set as default. For example, different countries have different rules on how to become an organ donor. In countries with the opt-in policy, all citizens are automatically considered as non-donors unless they actively register as donors. In countries with the opt-out policy, all citizens are automatically considered as donors unless they actively seek to be struck from the register. It has been argued that this difference in policy is the main cause of the significant difference in donor rates across the respective countries.



Some default effects are implied by the situation. In social settings, for example, the normative choice (what others are doing) may be adopted unconsciously as a social default effect. People are thus more likely to choose what they observe others choosing, even if they do not believe that other person is the more knowledgeable person. People are also more likely to treat choices that require less justification as defaults. The default option for parole hearings, for example, is to deny prisoners parole.



In the world of Chief Inspector Macdonald and Sinead Grogan, when someone has been murdered the default option is 'man kills man over a woman', or 'man kills woman over another man'. This is true even if no body has been found as yet.