Dixon Flashcards
What is the aim?
to see if a suspect with a Birmingham accent would receive a higher rating of guilt compared to a standard British accent (also tested race and type of crime)
What is the method and design?
lab experiment with an independent measures design
What were the 3 comparisons (IVs) ?
- Birmingham vs standard British accent
- white vs black defendants
- blue vs white collar crime
How many conditions were there?
8
What was the DV?
number of guilty verdicts for each condition
What is the sample?
115 white undergraduate psychology students - Worcester uni (95 female and 24 males)
What is the sampling technique?
opportunity - participated as part of their course
How was the sample controlled?
participants who grew up in Birmingham were eliminated
What is the procedure?
- randomly allocated to condition
- listen to 2 min recorded conversation = transcript of real interview
- pre-test = check accuracy of accents and 95% of people in pre-test able to identify accents
What were the types of crimes?
white collar = cheque fraud
blue collar = armed robbery
How was race type manipulated?
providing different racial cues such as physical descriptions
How did participants rate guilt?
2 rating scales
What were the rating scales?
a) 1-7 scale innocent to guilty
b) speech evaluation assessment - superiority, attractiveness, and dynamism
What are the key findings?
- significant difference in guilt rating - Birmingham accent more guilty - mean = 4.27 and standard British mean = 3.65
- condition with most guilt = black/ blue collar/ Birmingham
- Birmingham rated lower on superiority
What are the conclusions?
that attributions of guilt may be affected by accent and jurors can be persuaded by characteristics of defendants
evaluate according to usefulness
- lawyer advice - how defendants can paint themselves in the best light / how to present themselves
- develop techniques that don’t require participants to speak
BUT
not clear on how to control inherent biases
evaluate according to reliability
- standardised = replicable = reliable
- penrod and cutler = same video tapes = reliable
evaluate according to validity
strengths
lab experiment = more controlled / standardised = internally valid
- e.g., same 2 min transcript (except accent)
weaknesses
lacks ecological validity: not reflective of real court cases - lacks mundane realism - real jurors get more evidence than a 2 min transcript
evaluate according to individual vs situational debate
individual - characteristics such as accent and race influence
situation - type of crime
Sigal & Ostrove = situational - characteristics of a courtroom e.g, how evidence is presented
Penrod & Cutler = individual - confidence of witness
evaluate according to social sensitivity
- people from Birmingham deemed inferior = stereotypes
- black people discriminated against in a legal context
- Castello + Sigal and Ostrove = attractiveness
evaluate according to data
strengths
- 1-7 scales = objective + easy to compare and analyse
weaknesses
- no reasoning behind WHY accent/ race/ type of crime influences Jurys
evaluate samples and ethnocentrism
strengths
- relatively large sample (119)
weaknesses
- culture bias = ethnocentric - only white students (Worcester uni)
- Western perspective of accents and class
- Castello dependent on western view of attractiveness = not generalisable
evaluate according to psychology as a science
- quan data
- reliable
- deterministic
evaluate according to reductionism
oversimplifies guilty verdicts to appearance - could be other interacting factors
