Crime Topic 4- psychology and the courtroom

Question 1

what was Dixon et al aims?

Answer 1

to test whether a Brummie accent will receive a higher rating of guilt than someone with a standard accent
to see whetehr teh accent of the suspect and or the crime of teh suspect is accussed of would make any difference in the likelihood of them being rated guilty

Question 2

what was dixon et al sample?

Answer 2

119 white undergraduate students 24 male 95 female from teh university of Worcester
anyone in Birmigham excluded
participated as part of theri course requirment
randomly assigned to on eof 8 conditions

Question 3

what was Dixon et al procedure?

Answer 3

an independant meaures design was used, participants listened to 2 minute recorded convo based on trasncript of an interview that took place in birmigham police station in 1995 it involved 2 people:
- a male in 40s standard accent police inspector
- a male in 20s role of suspect was able to switch between Brummie and standard

Question 4

the 3 independant variables that were manipulated..

Answer 4

1-the suspect had either Brummie or standard accent
2- the suspect was eitehr accused of armed robber( blue collar crime) or cheque fraud ( a white collar crime)
3- the susuect was described by the inspector as either bing white or black

Question 5

what happened next in the main study ?

Answer 5

in all version so the tape recording the suspect pleaded his innocnece
after listening to whcihever version they received tehy were given a 7point bipolar scle from innocnet to guilty
so the main depednat variable was teh participant attributions of guilt

Question 6

results in Dixon et al study

Answer 6

the brummie accent was rated higher on guilt than teh standard accent
when teh susepct was balck had a brummie accent and committed a bue collar crime he was significantly more accuseed guilty

Question 7

wht are the additional studies in crime topic 4?

Answer 7

Penrod & Cutler – witness confidence
Sigall and Ostrove – attractiveness of the defendant
Pennington and Hastie – story order
simon and chabris- visual inattention

Question 8

Penrod and Cutler study

Answer 8

Studied witness confidence in a series of studies including one where the confidence of a female eyewitness was manipulated as the IV.
In a videotape recording the witness said they were either 80 % confident about her identification or 100% confident
Used independent group design
Study used undergraduate jurors and and experienced jurors
The dependant variable was the percentage of guilty verdicts given in each confidence condition

Question 9

Penrod and Cutler study results

Answer 9

A significant differences were shown with the 60% guilty verdicts in the 80% confident and 67% for the in the 100 % confidence
Since even 100% condition 33 % not guilty we’re still given

Question 10

Sigall and Ostrove

Answer 10

Sigall and Ostrove showed that the effect of attractiveness in the defendant on the jury’s decision depends on the type of crime they are on trial for.
In a lab experiment using a sample of 120 college students participants read an account of a crime where the defendant was female. The IV where the crime was a burglary or involved swindling and whether they read an account that described the female defendant as attractive or unattractive or gave no information about her attractiveness.

Question 11

Sigall and Ostrove results

Answer 11

when looks arent relevant for the crime we are more lenient as assume that they are inhernty a nice person. howver if omeoen has missuesd their good looks tehn we judge more harshly
swindling 5.45 years in prison -ATTRACTIVE
burglary 2.8 years in prison- Attractive

Question 12

Pennington and Hastie

Answer 12

AIM: To test the hypothesis that jurors are more easily persuaded by ‘story order’ (presenting evidence in the sequence that events occurred) than ‘witness order’ (presenting witnesses in the order most likely to persuade a jury).
METHOD: Participants were asked to be jurors in a mock murder trial. The lawyers representing both the defence and the prosecution varied the order in which evidence was presented.

Question 13

Pennington and Hastie results

Answer 13

Story order-Story order
59%
Witness order-Witness order
63%
Story order-Witness order
31%
Witness order-Story order
78%
Defence want a not-guilty verdict, and they were more successful (low guilty rate) by using story order
Doesn’t make much difference as long as both sides use the same format
Prosecution want a guilty verdict and they were more likely to get one when using story order

Question 14

Pennington and Hastie implications

Answer 14

From these results, it is clear that story order is more persuasive than witness order. It appears that it is easier for the jurors to construct a story out of events told in the correct order than when events are told in the wrong order to try to increase their impact. Pennington and Hastie (1990) suggest that the reason why 80% of criminal court cases return guilty verdicts in the US is because prosecution lawyers tend to use story order and defence lawyers tend to use witness order. On the basis of the above study, all lawyers would be advised to use the story order strategy.

Question 15

simons and chabris

Answer 15

This study could be relevant to courtroom situations because barristers could use it to discredit eyewitness testimony, arguing that even if a witness was shown (via CCTV footage) to have been looking directly at an alleged crime taking place in front of them, that still doesn’t mean they necessarily ‘saw’ what was happening as they may not have been paying attention. As a consequence, it could be argued that the testimony of the eyewitness cannot be relied upon.

Question 16

How could a barrister defend their eyewitness against this line of argument?

Answer 16

Presumably, they could argue that even though the unexpected event was ‘missed’ on 46% of occasions, it was seen 54% of the time (i.e. it was seen more often than it was ‘missed’).