area 4 forensic psychology

Question 1

what did penrod and cutler study into?

Answer 1

witness cofidence

Question 2

what did penrod and cutler find?

Answer 2

more confident the witness is in providing their evidence to a jury, the more likely the jury is to return a guilty verdict.

Question 3

what did sherry rozell find?

Answer 3

children are good observers and can be reliable witnesses in identifying perpetrators. However they have greater difficulty in translating their observations into verbal accounts and recalling things chronologically.

Question 4

what did sherry rozell study?

Answer 4

children as witnesses

Question 5

what did dion study?

Answer 5

further study into the halo effect

Question 6

what did dion find?

Answer 6

‘what is beautiful is good’
There is a cognitive bias in which an observer’s overall impression of a person influences their feelings and thoughts about that person’s character

Question 7

what did castellow study?

Answer 7

Attractiveness of defendant & victim

Question 8

what did castellow find?

Answer 8

when the defendant was rated attractive, guilty verdicts were found 56% of the time against 76% for an unattractive defendant.
Where the victim was attractive the guilty verdict was found 77% of the time with 55% for the unattractive victim. appearance can have a powerful effect on jurors.

Question 9

what did sigall and ostrove study?

Answer 9

attractiveness of defendant and type of crime

Question 10

what did sigall and ostrove find?

Answer 10

attractive defendants had longer sentences for Fraud and shorter for burglary reversed for unnatractive.
Good looking more likely to receive reduced sentences, however in some crimes attractiveness may count against you because the jury think you have used your looks to get away with it

Question 11

what did maeder study?

Answer 11

race of defendant

Question 12

what did maeder find?

Answer 12

during sexual assault trials, when the defendant was white, attractive victims were rated as more responsible for the alleged assault than unattractive victims. this effect was reversed for trails with black defendant and non existent for trails with aboriginal Canadian defendents.

Question 13

aims of dixon?

Answer 13

1- if a suspect with a brummie accent would receive a higher rating of guilt than a suspect with a standard accent
2- whether race or type of crime would have an effect on how the suspect was judged

Question 14

sample of dixon?

Answer 14

119 white undergrads from a psychology department at university college of Worchester. Ppts who grew up in Birmingham were excluded

Question 15

methods of dixon?

Answer 15

Lab experiment – independent measures

Question 16

what are the IV’s of dixon?

Answer 16

IV1- brummie accent or standard accent
IV2- black or white
IV3- blue collar or white collar crime

Question 17

what is the DV in dixon?

Answer 17

DV- attributions of guilt on a 7 point rating scale
Speech evaluation instrument (SEI)

Question 18

procedure of dixon?

Answer 18

Ppts listened to a 2 min recording of a mock interview at a British police station.
The inspector had a standard accent and was a student in their mid-40’s.
The suspect was a ‘code switcher’ that switched between a standard ad a brummie accent and pleaded innocent
1 tape was was about white-collar crime
1 tape was about blue-collar crime
The description of the suspect was altered from black to white.
After listening the ppts completed 2 sets of rating scales one was suspects guilt on a scale on 1=77 and the second was language attitudes on superiority, attractiveness and dynamism

Question 19

results of dixon?

Answer 19

IV1- brummie accent rated higher than standard accent on ratings of guilt
IV2- not significant dif
IV3- no signifigant dif
However, suspect that was black, had a brummie accent and committed a blue collar crime received the highest guilt rating (IV’s INTERACT)

SEI- brummie accent was rated lower in superiority than standard accent. Further analysis shows superior and attractiveness of accent can predict guilty not dynamism

Question 20

conclusions of dixon?

Answer 20

Suggests certain accents can influence a jury’s verdict compared to a ‘standard accent’. This can be useful when preparing a defendant for court by getting then to speak in a neutral accent or could be used to train jury’s to not be biased towards certain accents.
Although race and type of crime seem to have no significant difference in attributions of guilt, when a black suspect is paired with blue collar crime and a less superior accent this biases guilt ratings

Question 21

what are some strategies to influence jury decision making?

Answer 21

present evidence in story order
use an expert witness
csi effect
appearance- clothes/tattoos ect

Question 22

whose theory supports presenting evidence in story order?

Answer 22

pennington and hastie
create a timeline as jurors use narrative to enhance memory and make sense of events

Question 23

whose theory supports using an expert witness?

Answer 23

cutler
did an experiment to investigate the influence of experts on jurours descision.
used experienced jurours and students. had to watch a videotaped trial and asked to rate credibilitty of witness

Question 24

what did cutler find?

Answer 24

no expert meant that they where insensitive to EYT
expert meant they were sensitive to EYT
sensitive- knowledge of how a factor can influence memory

Question 25

who did research into the CSI effect?

Answer 25

schweitzer and saks
forensic science is seen as a high tech magic meaning jurors have exaggerated faith in DNA and unrealistic expectation of evidence