Effects of Photographic Evidence on Mock Juror Judgement1

Effects of three levels of photographic evidence (color, black & white, no photograph) on 144 female subjects' monetary awards to an injured plaintiff were investigated in a 3 × 2 × 3 factorial design. Also manipulated were two levels of the severity of the plaintiff's injury and three levels of defendant blame. As predicted, a significant three-way interaction was observed such that the magnitude of the difference in monetary damages awarded the more and less severely injured plaintiff was greatest in the presence of the color photograph depicting injuries and when defendant blame was high. An emotional arousal interpretation for the effects of photographic evidence is tentatively offered.     

Information Integration in Juror Decision Making

Research applying information integration theory to jury decision making has long assumed that people average informational scale values when making legal judgments. Although often consistent with research results, this hypothesis has never been tested in a legal context against a more general additive rule. The present paper describes two studies conducted as a critical test between these two models. Incriminating evidence and eyewitness confidence were varied in a full-factorial, within-subjects design involving a total of 131 subjects acting as mock jurors. Subject responses included eyewitness accuracy and defendant-guilt probability estimates, as well as final verdict decisions. Results strongly support an averaging model of legal decision making. Additional results concerning the influence of initial attitudes and the interrelationships between the variables considered are reported and their implications are discussed.     

Disjunction Between Probability and Verdict in Juror Decision Making

Although the law assumes a close relation between the probability that a defendant committed the act in question and the ensuing verdict of the jurors, prior research has shown this assumption to be often violated. We present five experiments designed to show that factors that influence probability also influence verdict, but other factors are capable of directly producing changes in verdict without affecting probability. In Experiment 1, we replicated the Wells Effect; scenarios generating the same probability that the Blue Bus Company was to blame for the same accident, nevertheless, generated significantly different likelihoods of finding the defendant liable. In Experiment 2, we showed that equally diagnostic affirmative and negative evidence had differential effects on mock jurors' probability estimates and verdicts. In Experiment 3, we showed that a completely nondiagnostic witness, who either implicates the same bus company or a different bus company as did a diagnostic witness, significantly influenced mock jurors' verdicts. However, the nondiagnostic witness did not change the probability that the Blue Bus Company was responsible for the accident. In Experiment 4, we demonstrated that base rate and witness reliability information resulted in very similar probability estimates but radically different verdicts. In Experiment 5, we showed that a change in the diagnosticity of the evidence influenced both probability and verdict with the former mediating differences in the later. Because probability is only one of the several determinants of the verdict, the two dependent variables are not as closely related as the law presumes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effects of Race and Social Dominance Orientation in Simulated Juror Decision Making1

Recent mock‐jury research often has found no evidence that White jurors are more likely to convict and impose harsher sentences on Black compared to White defendants. Drawing on social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), this paper argues that this apparent null effect reflects that different racial biases shown by White jurors varying in social dominance orientation (SDO) cancel each other out. A mock‐jury study (n= 70) found no main effect for defendant race, but evidence for a crossover interaction with high SDO individuals showing an anti‐Black bias and with low SDO individuals showing a pro‐Black bias in their guilty judgments and sentence recommendations. The discussion argues race is still a critical factor in White jurors’ decision making.     

The Effect of Defendant's Plea on Mock Juror Decisions

Abstract

The study examined the attributional and attractional effects of admission or denial of a mistake in interaction with the stimulus person's status, the seriousness of the consequences of the mistake, and the certainty of the evidence. The factorial design of the experiment was 2 × 2 × 2 × 3 (Status x Consequences x Evidence x Admission). Male undergraduate college students in Bombay (N = 480) read a passage about a mislabeling incident in a pharmaceutical concern and then rated the stimulus person on several variables. Admission of the mistake elicited the most favorable ratings. The no-statement condition received slightly more negative evaluations than the denial condition. Higher status led to greater responsibility attribution, but seriousness of consequences did not. The most liked stimulus person was the high-status person who admitted his mistake in the condition of serious consequences and ambiguous evidence.     

Effects of Prejudicial Pretrial Publicity From Physical and Witness Evidence on Mock Jurors' Decision Making1

The effects of prejudicial pretrial publicity (PTP) from physical and witness evidence on decisions made by trained and untrained mock jurors were compared. Mock jurors viewed a videotaped rape trial and participated in jury deliberations. Training consisted of completion of a university course on psychology and law. As expected, physical evidence PTP produced more guilty votes than witness or no PTP. Both types of PTP influenced untrained mock jurors' punishment preferences and perceptions of satisfaction and fairness, whereas trained mock jurors' opinions on these measures were unaffected by PTP. Deliberations of trained mock juries were more task‐oriented and focused on relevant evidence and legal issues than that of their untrained peers. Limitations of this mock jury study were discussed.     

Mock Juror Judgment and the Insanity Plea: Effects of Incrimination and Sanity information1

Mock jurors were given information about a stabbing incident which varied in incrimination value (high or low) and a psychological profile of the perpetrator which varied in the degree of indicated insanity (high, medium, or low) in four replications of a 2 × 3 design. In one replication, the information was presented in the context of a sanity hearing where guilt was not an issue. In three other replications, the context was a criminal trial in which the defendant pleaded not guilty on the facts, not guilty by reason of insanity (NGI), or both. Judgments in the insanity plea replication were significantly affected by incrimination information even though sanity is legally the only issue. Insanity information predictably affected judgments in the sanity hearing but had only weak effects in the insanity plea context. It was concluded that the judgment dimension which equates insanity with not guilty results in a conflict which subjects resolved by viewing the dimension as more of a guilt dimension.     

The Roles of Shared Stereotypes and Shared Processing Goals on Mock Jury Decision Making

Some research on creativity has linked higher levels of neuroticism with greater creative achievement, whereas existential psychology sees the neurotic as incapable of channeling anxiety through creativity. The current research examines how levels of neuroticism affect individuals' creative responses in coping with existential threats. Drawing from terror management theory and creativity research, this research conceptualizes creative endeavors as a means to ameliorate existential anxiety that possesses varying degrees of appeal to different individuals. All three experiments found an interaction between levels of neuroticism and mortality salience in determining levels of creative interest, with neuroticism either measured or primed. Specifically, mortality salience is less likely to boost creative interest among more neurotic individuals.     

Content Effects on Decision Making

How does the domain or subject matter of a decision problem affect the outcome of the decision? Although decision-making research typically dismisses content as merely a cover story, the present research shows that it plays a fundamental role in the decision process by influencing the information processing that underlies it. An experiment is reported in which the same basic decision problem was presented in several content domains (legal traffic tickets, academic course grades, stock investments, and casino gambling). The changes in content led to changes in both strategies and mental representations, which in turn led to changes in decision outcomes, even though measures of the subjective utilities of the options remained unchanged.     

Effects of Prior Juror Experience on Juror Behavior

A psychological assumption underlying the common and legally sanctioned use of jurors with previous jury experience is that such prior experience has little effect on a juror's behavior. The empirical evidence on this assumption is reviewed. Special attention is devoted to recent research that indicates two types of potential bias among experienced jurors. The theoretical and practical implications of this research are discussed.     

Degree of Detail of Eyewitness Testimony and Mock Juror Judgments1

The influence of the degree of detail of eyewitness testimony on two sides of a court case was investigated in two experiments. In the first experiment subject-jurors read a civil court case involving an automobile-pedestrian accident. The plaintiff and the defendant presented conflicting eyewitness accounts. Judgments of the relative credibility of the eyewitnesses on each side and the percentage of negligence of the parties were influenced by the relative degree of detail of the eyewitness testimony on each side. In the second experiment subject-jurors read a criminal court case involving robbery and murder. The prosecution and defense presented conflicting eyewitness accounts. The degree of detail of the prosecution eyewitness testimony influenced judgments of guilt and judgments of the credibility of the eyewitnesses. An examination of the reasons for verdicts and credibility judgments revealed that some subjects inferred that an eyewitness who gave testimony with a greater degree of detail had a better memory for the trivial details and the culprit than an eyewitness who gave testimony with a lesser degree of detail. Implications of these results for the legal system are discussed.     

Triarchic Model Personality Traits and Their Impact on Mock Juror Perceptions of a White-Collar Criminal Defendant

The triarchic model of psychopathy proposes that this personality disorder is composed of 3 relatively distinct constructs: meanness, disinhibition, and boldness. Although the first 2 components are widely accepted, boldness has generated considerable theoretical debate concerning its relevance—largely due to its association with various ostensibly adaptive characteristics and socially desirable behaviors (e.g., self-reported heroism). But is being bold actually perceived by others as an intrinsically adaptive, socially desirable personality trait? We investigated this question using a novel approach—a jury simulation study that manipulated the level of triarchic traits exhibited by a white-collar criminal. More specifically, 330 community members read a vignette in which the defendant's degree of boldness and disinhibition was manipulated and then provided sentence recommendations and other evaluative ratings. As hypothesized, manipulating boldness and disinhibition resulted in more negative views of the defendant, with the boldness manipulation more consistently predicting higher global psychopathy, “meanness,” and “evil” ratings. Surprisingly, neither manipulation predicted sentence recommendations, although higher global psychopathy ratings did correlate with more punitive sentence recommendations. The presence of personality traits construed in some contexts as advantageous or socially desirable can be perceived as more dysfunctional and undesirable in other contexts—particularly when they cooccur with criminal behavior.     

Deciding the Fate of Others: The Cognitive Underpinnings of Racially Biased Juror Decision Making

In criminal law, jurors are supposed to ignore defendant race when considering factual matters of culpability. However, when judging the merits of a criminal case, jurors’ ability (or inability) to avoid bias may affect verdicts. Fact-based decision making expend cognitive resources, while heuristic-based decisions (e.g., using criminal stereotypes) conserve resources. Here, we investigated whether differences in cognitive resources and prejudice attitudes about Blacks influenced trial outcomes. We tested the impact of working memory capacity (WMC), cognitive load, prejudice, and target race (Black, White) on penalties ascribed to fictional criminal defendants in ambiguous-fact cases. Results showed that when “loaded,” prejudiced-low-WMC persons supported guilty verdicts with higher confidence more often for Black than White defendants. Conversely, regardless of WMC or prejudice attitude, participants penalized White defendants more often when not loaded. We suggest that cognitive resources and prejudice attitude influence fact-based decisions. Links to juror judgments and potential trial outcomes are discussed.     

Interactive Effects of Characteristics of Defendant and Mock Juror on U.S. Participants' Judgment and Sentencing Recommendations

Abstract

The authors examined the effects of interactions (a) between defendant attractiveness and juror gender and (b) between defendant race and juror race on judgment and sentencing among 207 Black, Hispanic, and White participants in the United States. After reading a vehicular-homicide vignette in which the defendant's attractiveness and race varied, the participants rated guilt and recommended sentences. The women treated the unattractive female defendant more harshly than they treated the attractive female defendant; the men showed an opposite tendency. The Black participants showed greater leniency when the defendant was described as Black rather than White. The Hispanic participants showed an opposite trend, and the White participants showed no race-based leniency. The findings on racial effects were consistent (a) with in-group favorability bias among the Black participants and (b) with attribution effects unrelated to race among the White participants.     

Individual Differences in Attitudes Relevant to Juror Decision Making: Development and Validation of the Pretrial Juror Attitude Questionnaire (PJAQ)1

This study involves scale development using theoretically derived items from previous measures and a lay consensual approach for generating new items. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to validate the emergent constructs assessing individual differences in attitudes of prospective jurors. Using case summaries, the Pretrial Juror Attitude Questionnaire (PJAQ) demonstrates superior predictive validity over commonly employed measures of pretrial bias. The PJAQ confirms the importance of theoretically derived constructs assessed by other scales and introduces new constructs to the jury decision‐making literature. The attitudes assessed by the PJAQ are conviction proneness, system confidence, cynicism toward the defense, racial bias, social justice, and innate criminality. Implications for assessing such attitudes and for better understanding the decision‐making process of jurors are discussed.     

决策中的图形框架效应

决策框架效应作为一种违背不变性原则的非理性偏差, 已经得到研究的广泛证实。本研究突破了传统研究中主要由语言描述引发框架效应的限制, 从图形表征这一新的视角对图形框架效应做了深入探讨。本研究共包括6个实验, 通过操纵选项在不同图形表征版本中物理属性差异的突出性, 发现在表达信息不变的情况下, 人们判断和决策的偏好会受到图形表征的影响, 即出现了图形框架效应。研究结果表明, 图形框架效应普遍存在于各种决策情境以及各种图形表征方式中。基于属性替代理论和齐当别原则, 我们提出了一种解释图形框架效应内部作用机制的两阶段心理加工模型--图形编辑的齐当别模型(The Graph-edited Equate-to-differentiate Model, GEM)。     

Effects of Feedback Complexity on Dynamic Decision Making

Prior research shows people suffer from misperceptions of feedback, generating systematic dysfunctional behavior in the presence of dynamic complexity - settings with multiple feedback loops, time delays, and nonlinearities. However, prior work has not adequately mapped the effect of these elements of complexity on performance. We report an experiment where subjects managed an inventory in the face of stochastic sales, a classic dynamic decision task. We vary the time delays and strength of the feedback loops to explore the impact of these elements of dynamic complexity on behavior. Subjects faced financial incentives and had opportunities to learn. Yet performance was significantly worse than optimal across all conditions. Subjects outperformed a naive "do-nothing" rule in the simple conditions, but performance deteriorated dramatically with increasing time delays and feedback effects, and most were outperformed by the do-nothing rule in the complex conditions. Regression analysis of subjects′ decisions showed most ignored the supply line of pending production and undercontrolled the system. Undercontrol increased significantly with growing time delays and feedback strength, showing subjects were insufficiently adaptive despite perfect knowledge of system structure and parameters. Subjects′ understanding of complex feedback settings declines as delays between cause and effect increase and as actions have stronger side effects. Few indications were found of active experimentation or learning: the need to control seemed to override the ability to learn.     

Negative Emotions Felt During Trial: the Effect of Fear,Anger, and Sadness on Juror Decision Making

During trial, jurors may experience a variety of emotions, many of which are negative. The current study examined the effects the negative emotions anger, fear, and sadness had on jurors' sentencing decisions and explored whether the cognitive appraisal theory or the intuitive prosecutor model could explain these effects. Jurors viewed the sentencing phase of a capital murder trial and were asked to sentence the defendant. Results indicated that after viewing the trial, jurors reported increased anger and sadness, but not fear. However, only change in anger affected jurors' sentences. Jurors who reported a greater change in anger were more likely to sentence the defendant to death. This effect was mediated by the level of importance that jurors placed on the prosecution's evidence and argument. Consistent with the intuitive prosecutor model, increased anger led to higher ratings of the importance of the aggravating evidence and an increase in death sentences. Implications are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.