criminal psychology topic 4-psychology and the courtroom

Question 1

dixon et al aims

Answer 1

-to test the hypothesis that a suspect with a Brummie accent will receive a higher rating of guilt than someone with a standard accent
-to see whether the race of the suspect and/or the type of crime the suspect is accused of would make any difference to the likelihood of them being rated guilty.

Question 2

dixon et al sample

Answer 2

119 white undergraduate psychology students (24 male,95 female) at University college Worcester who participated as part of their course requirements.
mean age 25.2
anyone who grew up in Birmingham was excluded
participants were randomly assigned to one of 8 conditions

Question 3

dixon et al procedure

Answer 3

independent measures design
participants listened to a 2 min recorded convo based on a transcript of an interview that took place in a Birmingham police station in 1995 with 2 people:
-a male in his late 40s with a standard accent playing the police inspector
-a male in his 20s who was able to speak in both a brummie accent and a standard accent as the suspect
3 manipulated independent variables:
-suspect spoke brummie or standard accent
-suspect was accused of either armed robbery or cheque fraud
-suspect was described by the inspector as white or black
in all versions the suspect pleaded his innocence.
after listening to their version of the tape, participants rates the suspect on a 7 point scale from innocent to guilty

Question 4

dixon et al results

Answer 4

-the brummie accented suspect was rated higher on guilt than the standard-accented suspect
-the brummie accent/black suspect/blue collar crime suspect got significantly higher guilt ratings than the other 5 conditions

Question 5

dixon et al conclusions

Answer 5

some accents are deemed to sound guiltier than others
dixon et al suggests that it is likely that strength of evidence in real cases will moderate any effects of accent on legal decision making

Question 6

penrod+cutler- witness confidence

Answer 6

lab experiment with independent measures design - participants included undergraduate students and experienced jurors
participants showed 1 of 2 videotapes mock trials for a robbery
independent variable centred on the key female eyewitness who stated in her evidence that she was either 80% or 100% confident about her identification of the suspect
participants acted as mock jurors to see if they found the suspect guilty or not
results:
-when eyewitness declared herself 80% confident about identity, suspect was found guilty 60% of the time
-when eyewitness 100% confident, suspect found guilty 67% of the time
this significant difference suggested that the more confident a witness is, the more jurors are likely to be persuaded