Social Psychology in Court

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Social Psychology in Court
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Eyewitness Testimony

• Having eyewitness increases vote for conviction -
  even when eyewitness is discredited
• Jurors tend to believe eyewitness whether they
  are right or wrong
• Eyewitness who recounts details of crime scene
  less likely to pay attention to faces - though
  jurors may see them as more attentive

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Eyewitness Testimony

• Studies where participant asked to identify
  criminal in line-up
• Most choose innocent person
• Eyewitnesses more confident than correct
• Jurors believe witnesses who are most confident

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Misinformation Effect

• Loftus research
• Participants asked whether car passed stop sign
  or yield sign
• Misinformation effect - incorporating wrong
  information into a memory of an event after
  receiving misleading info.
• Misleading information is incorporated more when
  suggestive questions are repeated

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Misinformation Effect (cont.)

• Young children most susceptible to misinformation
  effect
• Visualizing something tends to activate similar
  areas in the brain as does actually experiencing
  it
• Accurate retelling of events after crime helps
  people to resist misinformation effect

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How to get accurate eyewitness testimony

• Eyewitnesses should give unprompted recollection
  of events before questioned by police
• did you see the broken headlight vs. did you
  see a broken headlight
• Eyewitnesses who ID people quickly (within 10-12
  seconds) tend to be more accurate than those who
  take awhile to think about it
• Giving eyewitnesses a lineup that contains all
  innocent people can help to weed out those likely
  to make false identifications

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What else influences the jury?

• How the defendant looks
• Study found that attractive people are seen as
  less guilty and get less punishment
• Defendant judged more harshly if victim is
  attractive
• Baby-faced adults seen as less guilty of
  intentional crimes

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What else influences the jury? (cont.)

• Defendant similarity to jurors
• Studies show that jurors more lenient to those of
  similar political view, religion, race, and
  attitudes
• Stereotypes
• Crime stereotypes - jurors harsher in sentence
• Blacks who kill Whites sentenced to death more
  often than Whites who kill Blacks
• Studies show that those who look more
  stereotypically Black are given harsher sentences

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What else influences the jury? (cont.)

• Hard for jurors to ignore evidence that has been
  declared inadmissible
• Judges order to ignore testimony is likely to be
  ignored
• Jurors shown to have difficult time understanding
  instructions and statistical information about a
  case

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Death Penalty?

• Death penalty does not seem to be a deterrent
  against crime
• States with death penalty dont have lower
  homicide rates
• Why isnt it a deterrent?