Dixon research

Question 1

what was the aim of the study?

Answer 1

to test the hypothesis that the Brummie accent will produce stronger attributions of guilt than the stand accents and to test whether race of the suspect and the type of crime committed would influence this effect

Question 2

how many participants were there?

Answer 2

• Departments of psychology at university college, Worchester
• 119 white, undergraduate university students (24 male, 95 female)
• individuals from Birmingham were eliminated from this study as they were concerned with the reaction of individuals who did not acquire this accent

Question 3

what was the procedure?

Answer 3

• participants were randomly allocated to eight conditions (race, type of crime - blue or white collar - accent)
• they were then asked to listen to a police interview that took place in a British police station in 1995
• in order to ensure that participants could correctly identify the brummie accent and standard accent, a pre-test was conducted which highlighted that more than 95% of participants could decipher between the two accents
• the type of crime was manipulated by highlighting that blue collar crime was theft whilst white collar crime was forgery
• the race of the victim was described throughout the interview by using different racial cues
• once they had listened to the interview, they were asked to rate the suspect’s guilt on a 7 point rating scale
• using the Speech Evaluation Instrument - language was measured based on 3 dimensions; superiority, attractiveness, dynamism

Question 4

what were the findings?

Answer 4

• the brummie accent had been rated more guilty than the standard accent
• the black, brummie accented suspect who committed blue collar crime was rated the most guilty
• superiority and attractiveness significantly predicted guilt
• perhaps the brummie accent is perceived more guilty because it may come across as less assured and confident so may be more likely to be associated with shifty and untrustworthy behaviour

Question 5

what influence does inadmissable evidence have (Broeder)?

Answer 5

• played jurors tape of a trial where a woman was injured by a careless male driver
• found that when he said he had liability insurance, jurors awarded an average of $4000 more ($33,000 - $37,000)
• when fact of his insurance was ruled as inadmissable, jurors awarded $46000
• this highlights how banned informations acquires greater importance

Question 6

what is the CSI effect?

Answer 6

a widely discussed but unproved belief that television dramas revolving around forensic science raises jurors’ expectations about the use of scientific evidence in criminal cases and thereby reduce the likelihood of guilty verdicts in trials that rely solely on witness testimony and other forms of non scientific evidence

Question 7

what is the impact of fMRI scans as evidence?

Answer 7

when fMRI evidence is used, jurors are more likely to consider the defendant as guilty - more influential than non scientific evidence such as witness testimonies - perhaps considered more valid

Question 8

what is the strengths of this study?

Answer 8

• high reliability - the controlled conditions enables other researchers to replicate this study
• allowed participants to deliberate in groups which is representative of the experience of the jury
• ethical - unlikely that the participants are going to experience harm and distress

Question 9

what is the weaknesses of this study?

Answer 9

• lacks ecological validity - participants listened to a recorded version of a fake police interview rather than being a witness to a real interview
• lacks population validity and can also be considered ethnocentric; participants are all psychology undergraduate students from Worchester