The Impact of Race,Racial Attitude,and Gender on Reactions to the Criminal Trial of O. J. Simpson1

Opinions about the criminal trial of O. J. Simpson, as well as general racial attitude, were assessed in different samples of African Americans and Whites in three studies: during jury selection (Study 1), after closing arguments (Study 2), and after the jury verdict was reached (Study 3). We assessed the effects of respondent race, gender, and general racial attitude on case opinion factors and guilt judgments at each point in time. Race was strongly related to case opinions and guilt judgments in all three studies. Racial attitude related significantly to guilt judgments only in Study 1 for Blacks and in Study 3 for Whites. Guilt judgments of Whites were more strongly predicted by the case opinion factors than were those of African Americans. General racial attitudes and opinions about the criminal justice system were more positive for Blacks in Studies 2 and 3, while they did not differ across studies for Whites. A hindsight bias was found for Whites but not for African Americans. Race had a more powerful impact than did gender. Across-study comparison suggested that very few respondents changed their views appreciably over the year-long trial.     

How a “Reasonable Doubt” Instruction Affects Decisions of Guilt

Jurors are instructed to render a guilty verdict if they feel the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury is often told that this does not mean an absolute certainty of guilt and that even if it were possible to imagine a scenario in which the defendant is innocent, a guilty verdict may still be appropriate. Here, participants read a case summary. They were either told to say that the defendant was guilty if they believed in guilt beyond a reasonable doubt or were given more detailed instruction stressing that they did not have to be absolutely certain of guilt to give a guilty verdict. In Experiment 1, participants provided “think-aloud” protocols. Content analysis revealed that those who were given this instruction often used the phrase reasonable doubt to justify their guilty verdicts by saying that although they were not certain of the defendant's guilt, their belief exceeded the reasonable doubt threshold. None of the participants in the control group did this. Experiment 2 was designed to test if the instruction affected belief in guilt and the reasonable doubt threshold quantitatively. The instruction affected both people's belief in guilt and the threshold that they used to define reasonable doubt. The implied values for reasonable doubt were 63% for those who received the instruction and 77% for the control group. Implications for jury decision making are discussed.     

An assessment of the potential utility of “scientific jury selection”: A “thought experiment” approach

The efficacy of “scientific jury selection” (the use of social science methodology to aid the jury selection process) has been a subject of considerable contention. Unfortunately, such issues are difficult to address empirically, especially at the level of jury rather than juror decisions. One means of addressing some of these questions is through the use of “thought experiments” or computer simulations that are based not on intuition or conventional wisdom alone but guided by relevant empirical data. This paper reports the outcomes of simulations that explore jury verdict consequences from the use of scientific jury selection to (a) obtain changes in venue, (b) select jurors, and (c) accomplish both of the preceding. The results indicated that the potential effects of scientific jury selection are strongest when the techniques are successful in bringing about changes of venue or more representative jury panels. Somewhat weaker, albeit still consequential, effects were observed in those instances where scientific jury selection techniques are used to select particular jurors. The psychological and legal implications of these results, and the thought experiment approach in general, are discussed.     

Authoritarianism-situation interactions in the determination of punitiveness: Engaging authoritarian ideology

An analysis of previously reported authoritarianism-situation interactions in the determination of punitiveness suggested that the extent to which target person characteristics or behaviors engage the important ideological content dimensions of the authoritarianism syndrome is a potent mediator of authoritariansim-punitiveness relationships. Support for this analysis was obtained in a jury decisions task in which high authoritarians recommended more severe punishments than did low authoritarians for a defendant accused of incest (p < .01) but not for a defendant accused of child abuse in the course of disciplining a disobedient son or daughter. It was argued that a thorough understanding of authoritarianism-situation interactions as well as other disposition-situation interactions will be achieved only if dispositional variables receive a degree of scrutiny at least equal to that which has recently been recognized as crucial for situational variables.     

What are we studying? Student jurors,community jurors,and construct validity

Jury researchers have long been concerned about the generalizability of results from experiments that utilize undergraduate students as mock jurors. The current experiment examined the differences between 120 students (55 males and 65 females, mean age = 20 years) and 99 community members (49 males and 50 females, mean age = 42 years) in culpability evaluations for homicide and sexual assault cases. Explicit attitude measures served as indicators of bias for sexual assault, defendant, and homicide adjudication. Results revealed that student and community participants showed different biases on these general explicit attitude measures and these differences manifested in judgments of culpability (guilt likelihood, convincingness of state's arguments, convincingness of defendant's arguments, and the defendants' criminal intentions) in sexual assault and homicide case scenarios. The results also showed that student mock jurors were more lenient when assigning guilt in homicide cases than were community members. The implications for future mock jury research are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Derogation of an innocent victim as a function of authoritarianism and involvement

Two studies are reported in which observers witnessed a peer (learner) receiving electric shock and where they did or did not play a role in her suffering (Involved vs Noninvolved conditions). It was found in both studies that while High authoritarians were more likely than Low authoritarians to derogate the learner in Involved conditions, the reverse was true in Noninvolved conditions. These significant interactions (p < .03, p < .01) were interpreted in terms of Low authoritarians derogating in order to preserve their belief in a “just world” and High authoritarians derogating in order to avoid self-blame.     

Productive conflict in group decision making: genuine and contrived dissent as strategies to counteract biased information seeking

Decision-making groups in organizations are often expected to function as a “think tank” and to perform “reality testing” to detect the best alternative. A biased search for information supporting the group's favored alternative impairs a group's ability to fulfill these requirements. In a two-factorial experiment with 201 employees and managers from various economic and public organizations, genuine and contrived dissent were investigated as counterstrategies to biased information seeking. Genuine dissent was manipulated by forming three-person groups whose members either all favored the same alternative individually (homogeneous groups) or consisted of a minority and a majority faction with regard to their favored alternative (heterogeneous groups). Contrived dissent was varied by the use or nonuse of the “devil's advocacy” technique. The results demonstrate that heterogeneity was more effective in preventing a confirmatory information-seeking bias than devil's advocacy was. Confidence was identified as an important mediator. Implications for the design of interventions aimed at facilitating reality testing in group decision making are discussed.     

Effects of physical attractiveness on evaluations of a male employee's allegation of sexual harassment by his female employer

College students (N = 324) served as mock jurors in a simulated civil case in which a male plaintiff accused a female defendant of sexual harassment. The authors experimentally manipulated the physical attractiveness of the litigants. The authors asked mock jurors to decide whether the defendant was guilty and to rate their certainty of belief in the defendant's guilt (or lack of guilt). Jurors were more certain of the guilt of the defendant when the plaintiff was attractive than when he was unattractive. Plaintiff attractiveness significantly affected female jurors' individual recommended verdicts when the defendant was unattractive but not when she was attractive. With male jurors, plaintiff attractiveness significantly affected their verdicts when the defendant was attractive but not when she was unattractive. Female jurors were more likely than male jurors to conclude that sexual harassment had taken place but only when the litigants were different in attractiveness.     

Pretrial Publicity, the Timing of the Trial, and Mock Jurors' Decision Processes

Pretrial publicity and a temporal interval between the news and trial were explored for their effects upon the jury's deliberation process and verdict. Publicity (neutral, negative) and trial timing (immediate, delayed) were manipulated in a 2 × 2 design. Twenty 12-person simulated juries were exposed either to neutral or negative publicity and viewed a videotaped criminal trial immediately following news exposure or after a one-week delay between news and trial. Dichotomous pre-and postdeliberation verdicts, probability of guilt scales, trial recall, ratings of companion jurors, perceptions of attorneys, assessments of the news article, and recall of news facts were measured. Deliberations were tape recorded and content analyzed. Juries exposed to neutral and negative publicity did not significantly differ on conviction rate, deliberation length, or on quality of deliberations. Prejudicial news elicited counter remarks about the threatening nature of the publicity to the defendant's right to a fair trial. Individual juror data revealed that while the news manipulation did not significantly affect predeliberation verdicts or attention to trial events, negative news lowered jurors' probability estimates of guilt and facilitated their recall of news facts. A discriminant analysis predicting jury verdict indicated a lack of support for prior research showing damaging effects from prejudicial pretrial publicity. Findings are explored for methodological implications and for usefulness of theoretical notions of reactance, and "sleeper effects".     

Reducing racial bias in the penalty phase of capital trials

Past research (e.g. Lynch & Haney, 2000) has shown that race plays a significant role in juror decision making in the penalty phase of capital murder trials. This study investigates the possibility of reducing juror bias towards Blacks by altering the content of jury instructions. White and non-White participants received trial information and jury instructions in which the defendant's race (Black or White) and the instruction type (standard or simplified) were manipulated. Participants rendered a sentence recommendation, identified factors they considered to be aggravating or mitigating, and responded to instruction comprehension questions. Bias against the Black defendant was significantly reduced when simplified instructions were used and when the defendant was judged by racially diverse jurors. Simplification also led to better comprehension of sentencing instructions. Implications for capital trials are discussed.     

Attitudes toward immigrants: The interactive role of the authoritarian predisposition,social norms,and humanitarian values

This investigation tested whether social norms and endorsement of humanitarian values interact to influence authoritarians' attitudes toward immigrants. Oyamot, Borgida, and Fisher (2006) found correlational evidence for a model in which: (1) clear social norms for attitudes toward an outgroup (favorable or unfavorable) influence the authoritarianism–attitude relationship in the direction of the norm, and (2) in the absence of clear social norms, endorsement of humanitarian–egalitarian values attenuate the intolerant tendencies of authoritarians. The current investigation tested the model in a survey experiment conducted in a diverse adult sample (N = 388). We measured participants' levels of authoritarian predisposition and endorsement of humanitarian values. Participants were then randomly told that Americans in general had either negative, positive, or mixed opinions about immigrants and immigration (social norm condition), and then asked about their attitude toward immigrants. Consistent with the model, authoritarianism was negatively related to attitudes toward immigrants in the negative norm condition. However, authoritarians' tendency toward intolerance was attenuated when they thought that Americans in general had positive opinions about immigrants. Also as predicted, when societal norms were depicted as mixed, authoritarians' attitudes depended upon endorsement of humanitarian values: humanitarian authoritarians held positive attitudes and non-humanitarian authoritarians held the most negative attitudes toward immigrants. Implications for understanding the effects of authoritarian predispositions in varying social contexts are discussed.     

The Effects of Delayed Report and Motive for Reporting on Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

We examined whether the timing of the report and the victim's apparent motive for reporting influences women's and men's perceptions of sexual harassment. Undergraduates (153 women, 149 men) listened to 1 of 6 versions of audiotaped testimony of the victim and defendant. The report was filed either immediately or 18 months later, and motive either was presented as altruistic, retaliatory, or was not specified. Participants chose a verdict, rated the defendant's guilt, and rated the defendant and victim on several dimensions. Higher guilt ratings, more positive evaluations of the victim, and more negative evaluations of the defendant were associated with immediate reporting and an altruistic motive, although women weighed these factors more heavily than did men.     

Evaluation and recall of evidence: Authoritarianism and the Patty Hearst case

By using the Patricia Hearst case as the stimulus material, two experiments were conducted to examine the relationship between authoritarianism and recall of evidence. In Experiment I it was found that high authoritarians recall more prosecution evidence than defense evidence. This was not the case for the low authoritarians. Results concerning the hypothesis that high authoritarians would recall more character information than low authoritarians were equivocal. In Experiment II a trend indicating that high authoritarians draw more direct inferences from incriminating evidence than do low authoritarians or an attorney was obtained. The results are discussed in terms of previous findings, authoritarian theory, and characteristics of the Patricia Hearst case.     

The Case Study Method of Rehabilitating Drivers

Summary

This study was designed to examine the relationship between attitudes toward homosexuality and attitudes toward certain aspects of heterosexual sexuality and to personal sex guilt and sex stereotyping. One hundred twenty-six Canadian male students completed a series of specially devised attitude scales pertaining to these areas. On the basis of their responses to the anti-homosexual scale, subjects were divided into a prohomosexual (Pro-H) and antihomosexual (Anti-H) group.

Results showed that Anti-H respondents were more intolerant of a variety of heterosexual behaviors. Anti-H Ss reported more personal sex-guilt and higher level of repression of their own sexual impulses than did Pro-H subjects. The Anti-H group also demonstrated a greater stereotyping of the sexes by their sex-typing of a variety of personality characteristics, hobbies, and professions. These Ss were also more willing to label a man as homosexual when he exhibited what they thought of as a single feminine characteristic than were Pro-H subjects.

These findings provide supportive evidence for the theoretical formulations of Churchill (4) regarding antihomosexualism in a sex-negative environment. As the intercorrelations between the three principal attitude scales were only moderate, it appears that attitudes toward homosexuality are at least somewhat specific, not just part of a more general sexual attitude. Similarly, anti-homosexual attitudes correlate positively but moderately with general sexual conservatism and with personal sex guilt.

Discussion of these moderate correlations suggested the relevance of various sources of prejudice. The uncritical acceptance of culturally pervasive stereotypes could account for much measured antihomosexual feelings. It was also suggested that development of the culturally acceptable masculine identity is facilitated by the individual's desire to avoid the stigmatization of being “feminine;; which, in cultural terms, means also being “queer.”     

Authoritarianism,Threat, and Prejudice: An Analysis of Mediation and Moderation

Right-wing authoritarianism is a central construct in individual differences approaches to prejudice. Its power to predict prejudice is often attributed to perceived threat. However, the exact moderating and mediating processes involved are little understood. In two studies (Ns = 53, 84), exposure to threatening versus nonthreatening information about an ethnic out-group had reliable indirect effects on prejudice in authoritarians, but not in nonauthoritarians, largely because authoritarians were more likely to perceive actual threat when they interpreted the information received to represent a threatening argument. Additionally, in Study 2, authoritarians reacted more strongly with negative emotions when they perceived actual threat.     

The experience of self-awareness and its relation to level of self-consciousness: An experiential sampling study

The present research studied self-awareness by utilizing experiential sampling methodology, which allows for the random sampling of individuals' thoughts and feelings as they go about their normal daily activities. Neither Study 1 nor 2 found a relation between private or public self-awareness and negative affect. However, attention to private self-aspects was generally more positive and less ruminative for low as opposed to high private self-conscious subjects, and awareness of oneself as a social object was generally more positive but less important for low as opposed to high public self-conscious subjects. What may have accounted for the negative relation between private self-consciousness and average affect was that low private self-conscious subjects were more likely to attend to their private self-aspects if they were pleasant than if they were unpleasant, while high private self-conscious subjects' degree of private self-awareness was unrelated to whether the content of this state was pleasant or not. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that low private self-conscious individuals engage in a more selective type of self-attention when in the private self-aware state than do high private self-conscious individuals. Regarding the relation between self-awareness and social context, both studies found that the presence of others results in a heightened public self-awareness. However, even though subjects were more attentive to public self-aspects when with others than when alone, in general, they were more attentive to their “private self” than to their “public self”. Results are discussed in terms of current self-awareness theory.     

Point of view in personal memories

A structural aspect of personal memories was examined in four studies. In some memories, one has the perspective of an observer, seeing oneself “from the outside.” In other memories, one sees the scene from one's own perspective; the field of view in such memories corresponds to that of the original situation. The existence of “observer” and “field” memories was confirmed in Study 1, using a recall questionnaire. In Study 2, the similarity structure of a specified set of eight to-be-recalled situations was established: the significant dimensions were “emotionality” and “self-awareness.” Study 3 related these dimensions to the observer-field distinction; situations involving a high degree of emotion and selfawareness were most likely to be recalled with an observer perspective. Recall set was varied in Study 4: a focus on feelings (as opposed to objective circumstances) produced relatively more field memories. Studies 3 and 4 also showed that events reported as more recent tend to be recalled in the field mode. Thus a qualitative characteristic of personal memories—the perspective from which they are experienced—is apparently related to characteristics of the original event, to the individual's purpose in recalling that event, and to the reported recall interval.