Ch 15: Social Psych in Court

1
Ch 15 Social Psych in Court

• Part 2 Apr 27, 2006

2
Juror Biases

• Attractiveness effect lab experiments
• What does research indicate?
• Downs Lyons 1700 actual cases in TX
• How were judges affected?
• Similarity effect judge people similar to us
  less harshly
• acquaintance rape example

3
Judges instructions

• Instruct jury to ignore biased info (such as
  objections that are sustained)
• But impact of hindsight bias?
• Can backfire ? cause reactance
• Pretrial publicity hard to ignore
• How does it impact judgments?

4
Jury Deliberations

• Processing the info
• impact on convictions when evidence presented in
  story order or witness order?
• Bias of death-qualified jurors
• Who are these people?
• How are their decisions affected?

5
Influence of Numerical Minorities on Juries

• Not too powerful in jury room most often final
  verdict is the initial verdict
• 2/3rds majority rule what is the result?
• When minority can influence the majority, in
  which direction do they most likely change their
  decision?

6
Group Influence in Juries

• Group polarization
• Individual beliefs about sentencing, find others
  agree ? what happens?
• Occurs among jurors compare initial vs. final
  sentences
• Leniency bias
• What is the effect?

7
12 v 6-person juries

• Supreme Court says in non-death penalty cases, 6
  person juries can be used
• Social psychologists criticized this
• Why?
• How does conformity research apply?

8
Criticisms of jury research

• Not allowed to observe real juries, so mock
  juries are formed in labs.
• Are these studies realistic?
• Disadvantages of this lab research
• Advantages?