crime - psychology and the courtroom Flashcards
castellow A-Pr
A: to test the idea that the attractiveness of the defendant/victim effects the jury
M+D: lab experiment + independent measures
pps: 145 students from America
Ps: pps were told they were reading a sexual harassment case and would answer Q’s about it. photos of the defendant and the victim were attached. who were categorised as attractive or unattractive by a panel. pps were asked to rate both defendant and victim in bi-polar scales
castellow R+C
R: physically attractive were more positively rated on the bipolar scales - proving the halo effect.
Attractive defendant = 56% guilty
Unattractive defendant = 76% guilty
Attractive victim = 77% guilty
Unattractive victim = 55%
C: appearance has a powerful effect on jury decisions
Ross A-Pr
A: to see if the use of protective shields and videotapes increases the likelihood of a guilty verdict
M+D: lab experiment + independent measures
PPS: 300 pps, 100 in each condition
condition 1: control (child in full view)
condition 2: child behind screen
condition 3: child gave evidence via videotape
Ps: the judge gave warning that jury should not use relay of evidence to imply guilt
Ross R+C
R: no significant difference amongst the conditions
significant difference between gender 59% of females assigned guilt but only 39% males.
the use of shields did not have an impact
Cutler A-Pr
A: to see if witness confidence effected the jury
M+D: lab experiment + independent measures
PPS: 538 undergrad students
Ps: pps watched a mock trial based on a robbery case. they then completed a questionnaire which measured their verdict and confidence in verdict. witness confidence was 80% or 100%
Cutler R+C
R: 80% - 60%
100% - 67%
C: confidence of the witness makes the jurors pay more attention when making a decision
Eberhardt A-pr
A: to investigate racial bias in sentencing
M+D: lab experiment + independent measures
PPS: students
Ps: she asked naïve raters to rate how stereotypically black certain faces were (all faces had previously been sentenced)
Eberhardt R+C
R: the more stereotypically black faces had been issued a harder sentencing
C: the race of a person does affect how they are judged, therefore there is a racial bias in the judicial system
dixon A-pps
A: to further document the consequences of accent in a legal context by investigating the influence of an English or a brummie accent on attributions of guilt toward a criminal suspect. also the effect of race and type of crime committed.
lab experiment + independent measures.
department of psychology at uni college - Worcester. 119 white undergrads - 24M, 95W
Dixon - procedure
conditions was each accent (english/brum) with each race (black/white) and each type of crime (black/blue).
listened to 2 minute recording of an interview between a young male suspect and police officer.
blue collar crime: armed robbery
white collar crime: cheque fraud.
2 rating scales, 1. 7point bipolar scale from innocent to guilty
2. rating based on superiority, attractiveness and dynamism
dixon - R+C
brummie accent was rated more guilty than english.
brum/blue/black had the highest guilty rating.
suspect level of superiority and attractiveness predicted guilt but dynamism did not.
C: attribution of guilt is affected by accent, race and type of crime.
application: order of presentation
pennington: to. investigate whether or not story evidence summaries are causes of final verdicts and how much story order affects confidence in decision
story order had an affect on the verdict. prosecution use story order = 78% guilty. defendant use story order = 69% not guilty
application: expert witness
Loftus: effect of expert witness on jury. use of an expert witness decreased guilty verdict rate from 58% to 39%
