The promise of a cognitive perspective on jury deliberation

Despite much psychological research regarding jury decision making, surprisingly little is known about the deliberation process that gives rise to jury verdicts. We review classic jury decision-making research regarding the importance of deliberation and more recent research, investigating deliberation and hung juries, that challenges the view that deliberation does not have an important impact on verdicts. We advocate greater attention to potential cognitive processes during deliberation that might explain the transition between predeliberation preferences and a jury’s ultimate verdict. We then review cognitive work in the group context generally, and the jury context specifically, illustrating the promise of a cognitive perspective on jury deliberation. Finally, we identify cognitive phenomena likely to be particularly valuable in illuminating deliberation behavior.     

The effects of jury size, evidence complexity, and note taking on jury process and performance in a civil trial

A total of 567 jury-eligible men and women who were assigned to 6- or 12-person juries saw a videotaped civil trial that contained either I or 4 plaintiffs. Half the juries took notes, whereas the remainder did not. Six-person juries that did not take notes awarded multiple plaintiffs the highest amounts of compensation. Six-person juries also gave the highest punitive damages when they did not take notes and judged multiple plaintiffs. The punitive awards of 6-person juries were highly variable compared with 12-person juries. Multiple plaintiffs also increased the unpredictability of jury punitive awards. Twelve-person juries deliberated longer, recalled more probative information, and relied less than 6-person juries on evaluative statements and nonprobative evidence. Limitations and implications are discussed.     

The effects of defendant conduct on jury damage awards

Laws of negligence dictate that jurors' decisions about damages be influenced by the severity of plaintiffs' injuries and not by the reprehensibility of defendants' conduct. The authors simulated an automobile negligence trial to assess whether jurors' decisions are in accord with those expectations. Conduct of the defendant and severity of the plaintiff's injuries were manipulated. Jurors listened to the evidence, completed predeliberation questionnaires, deliberated as a jury, and completed postdeliberation questionnaires. Severity of the plaintiff's injury had a strong impact on damage awards, but evidence related to the defendant's conduct was also influential, particularly when the plaintiffs injuries were mild. Here, jurors with any conduct-related evidence gave larger damage awards than jurors with no conduct-related evidence. Findings suggest an effect of defendant conduct on damage awards that may be mediated by judgments that the defendant was negligent.     

Pre- versus postdecisional deliberation and goal commitment: The positive effects of defensiveness

Building on Gollwitzer's (1990) mindset theory of action phases, it is proposed that the effects of assigned balanced deliberation on subsequent goal commitment are moderated by people's pre- versus postdecisional status. A balanced deliberation and impartial assessment of pros and cons is expected to reduce goal commitment in predecisional individuals, whereas a distortion of the assigned balanced deliberation and a partial focus on the pros of goal pursuit should defend and strengthen goal commitment in postdecisional individuals. Indeed, in Study 1, assigned deliberation on the pros and cons of pursuing a focal goal promoted stronger reported goal commitment in participants who had decided to pursue this goal, but reduced goal commitment for people who had not yet made such a decision. In Study 2, the same pattern of results emerged when goal commitment was indicated by planning to act on the goal. Study 3 replicated findings using a different decision status manipulation and goal persistence as a measure of commitment. Finally, results of Study 4 suggested that the increase in commitment produced by defensive postdecisional deliberation is consequential as it was found to drive real-life behavior by promoting goal-directed action. Moreover, Study 2: deliberation effects on subsequent planning activity, Study 3: deliberation effects on goal persistence, Study 4: deliberation effects on real-life behavior explored the underlying process and provided evidence that it is the partial focus on the pros of goal pursuit, meant to defend existing goal commitment, that drives postdecisional deliberation's strengthening effects on goal commitment. Implications for mindset theory, goal commitment theory, and decision making are discussed.     

The freedom of Christ and the problem of deliberation

Call the claim, common to many in the Christian intellectual tradition, that Christ, in virtue of his created human intellect, had certain, infallible exhaustive foreknowledge the Foreknowledge Thesis. Now consider what I will call the Conditional: If the Foreknowledge Thesis is true, then Christ’s created human will lacked an important sort of freedom that we mere humans have. Insofar as many, perhaps all, of the people who affirm the Foreknowledge Thesis also wish to affirm the robust freedom of Christ’s human will, the truth of the Conditional would be most unwelcome to them. I consider an argument in support of the Conditional from the necessary conditions for deliberation, arguing that the argument fails.     

The procedural epistemic value of deliberation

Collective deliberation is fuelled by disagreements and its epistemic value depends, inter alia, on how the participants respond to each other in disagreements. I use this accountability thesis to argue that deliberation may be valued not just instrumentally but also for its procedural features. The instrumental epistemic value of deliberation depends on whether it leads to more or less accurate beliefs among the participants. The procedural epistemic value of deliberation hinges on the relationships of mutual accountability that characterize appropriately conducted deliberation. I will argue that it only comes into view from the second-person standpoint. I shall explain what the second-person standpoint in the epistemic context entails and how it compares to Stephen Darwall’s interpretation of the second-person standpoint in ethics.     

The effect of a machine-rich environment on courseware development: The process and the product

The development of courseware in conjunction with Drexel’s microcomputer program is discussed. Many factors have influenced development, but the machine-rich environment has had the major impact on both the process of development and the type of courseware that has been generated. Integrating the computer as a tool into this saturated environment requires many developers across all curricula. The end result is an enriched development environment that benefits from the exchange of ideas and methods across all disciplines within the University.     

The effects of process and outcome accountability on judgment process and performance

This article challenges the view that it is always better to hold decision makers accountable for their decision process rather than their decision outcomes. In three multiple-cue judgment studies, the authors show that process accountability, relative to outcome accountability, consistently improves judgment quality in relatively simple elemental tasks. However, this performance advantage of process accountability does not generalize to more complex configural tasks. This is because process accountability improves an analytical process based on cue abstraction, while it does not change a holistic process based on exemplar memory. Cue abstraction is only effective in elemental tasks (in which outcomes are a linear additive combination of cues) but not in configural tasks (in which outcomes depend on interactions between the cues). In addition, Studies 2 and 3 show that the extent to which process and outcome accountability affect judgment quality depends on individual differences in analytical intelligence and rational thinking style.     

The influence of decision task and deliberation style on the verdict of the juries

The influence of decision task and deliberation style on the verdict of the juries. In the Kameda's Deliberation Style Model the emission of verdicts of responsibility when the deliberation style of the juries (elemental/compound) and the type of decision task (disjunctive/conjunctive) are jointly manipulated, is favoured in certain conditions. Given the consequences that these approaches could have in real judicial processes, this model is analyzed using a manslaughter crime under the Spanish judicial context conditions (nine members juries and seven or five members majorities emitting a verdict of guilty or not guilty, respectively). The obtained results indicated a better operation of the model when a conjunctive decision task was demanded.     

Ramsey and Joyce on deliberation and prediction

Synthese - Can an agent deliberating about an action A hold a meaningful credence that she will do A? ‘No’, say some authors, for ‘deliberation crowds out prediction’...     

The effects of majority size on minority influence

Two experiments investigated the role of majority size (social pressure) in minority influence. Opposite predictions were derived from an attributional account and two social impact models. In Experiment 1 there was a tendency for minority influence to decrease with increasing majority size when the minority argued against gay rights. The results were stronger and clearer in Experiment 2. For pro-abortion minorities, the minority's impact clearly declined as the size of the opposing majority increased. As predicted by the social impact models, this decline occurred during the initial increase of the majority size. The limitations of the mathematical models are discussed.     

The patenting process,innovation, and size

This paper focuses on the U.S. patenting process and how large and small entity inventors respond to it. In particular, a framework of patenting process events and activities related to success is developed and evaluated empirically, with a factor analysis revealing similarities and differences in the priorities of the two groups. The results have implications for both the conduct of the new product process under the law and for review and examination of public policy regarding patents. He received his Ph.D. from Lehigh University. His research interests include intellectual capital, intellectual property, and competitive intelligence. He has published in Journal of Marketing Management, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing & Public Policy, and Industrial Marketing Management.     

The effects of sound on pupil size and the pupil light reflex

The effects of auditory stimulation on pupil size and the pupil light reflex were investigated in 33 male volunteers. A 95dB tone caused pupillary dilation and a reduction in the amplitude of the light reflex. Although the light reflex amplitude was positively correlated with pupil size in the resting state the effects of noise on the two measures were independent since the pupillary dilation response showed a marked habituation after two presentations of the tone whereas the effect on the light reflex remained the same. People showing high impulsivity scores on the EPQ tended to have smaller pupils (i.e. low arousal). There was also a relationship between impulsivity and light reflex amplitude, but this was probably a secondary consequence of the relationship between the latter measure and pupil size in the resting state.     

The effects of prenegotiation expectations on the distributive bargaining process

The level of aspiration and minimum necessary share values of negotiators were manipulated prior to bargaining sessions in a simulated bilateral monopoly. Derivations from the theory of Kelley, Beckman, and Fischer were generally supported for low level of aspiration negotiators: subjects with high minimum necessary share values had higher mean levels of demand and received more points in the settlements than subjects with low minimum necessary share values. For high level of aspiration negotiators the effects were in the opposite direction; a tentative interpretation of the latter results was presented. In general, negotiators with high levels of aspiration had higher initial demands, higher mean levels of demand and received more points in the settlements than negotiators with low levels of aspiration. These findings support Siegel and Fouraker's model. However, on closer analysis the effects of level of aspiration were limited to negotiators with low minimum necessary share values.     

The effects of perspective alterations on apparent size and distance scales

Ss made magnitude estimations first of the areas, then of the distances, of four circles presented at five distances within an enclosed box 9 ft long. There were three viewing situations: the box had parallel walls, converging walls, or diverging walls. The variations in perspective cues influenced the apparent distance scales: with converging and parallel walls, apparent distance grew as the 1.4 power of physical distance; with diverging walls, it grew as the .95 power. Apparent area was related to distance differently in the three conditions: with converging walls, apparent area increased with distance; with parallel and diverging walls, apparent area decreased with distance. Apparent area was thus not related to changes in physical distance as the apparent distance effects would predict. In each condition, the ratio of apparent area to apparent distance (S′/D′) was a monotonie increasing function of retinal angle θ, but the rate of growth varied among the three conditions. The failure of θ D′ to define a unique value of S′ across conditions indicates that the size-distance invariance hypothesis is inadequate to predict the outcome of this experiment.     

Local interactions and the dynamics of rational deliberation

Whereas The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure supplements Evolution of the Social Contract by examining some of the earlier work’s strategic problems in a local interaction setting, no equivalent supplement exists for The Dynamics of Rational Deliberation. In this article, I develop a general framework for modeling the dynamics of rational deliberation in a local interaction setting. In doing so, I show that when local interactions are permitted, three interesting phenomena occur: (a) the attracting deliberative equilibria may fail to agree with any of the Nash equilibria of the underlying game, (b) deliberative dynamics which converged to the same deliberative outcome in The Dynamics of Rational Deliberation may lead to different deliberative outcomes here, and (c) Bayesian deliberation seems to be more likely to avoid nonstandard deliberative outcomes, contrary to the result reported in The Dynamics of Rational Deliberation, which argued in favour of the Brown–von Neumann–Nash dynamics.