lesson 17 - characteristics of defendant and jury decision

Question 1

A01

Answer 1

during a criminal case in the UK, a jury (group of 12 people) will listen to the evidence presented and make a verdict of guilty or not guilty
in an ideal world the jury will consist of unbiased, unprejudiced people who make a verdict on evidence given but that is not the case as stereotypes and schemas for types of people change our view on them

Question 2

Para 1 - Attraction

Answer 2

P: a defendant characteristic which has lots of research into affecting decision making is attractiveness. Attraction Leniency hypothesis is that physically attractive ppl are rated as good people, being kind, strong and sociable compared to unattractive.
E: Saladin et al showed pps pics of 8 men and they rated how capable they were to commit armed robbery and murder. the unattractive men were rated as more likely to commit crimes.
P: HOWEVER
E: Sigall and Ostrove showed pps the case of defendant either being attractive/unattractive and a crime of burglary/fraud. the prison sentence was longest for fraud for attractive ppl and there was no difference for the crimes for the unattractive.
E: this cus if attractive people use their looks to con people, the jury will then consider the attractive trait so being attractive isn’t always good characteristic

Question 3

Para 2 - accent

Answer 3

P: another defendant characteristic is accent as people have stereotypes about the person from where they grew up
E: Dixon et al investigated the Brummie accent where participants listened to a 2 min recorded transcript on a real case and then recorded the suspects level of guilt from innocent to guilty on a 7 point scale. results showed the accent was rated more guilty compared to the standard English accent.
E: this study supports that schema of accent can impact jury decision making

Question 4

Para 3 - ethnicity

Answer 4

P: the race of a person also affects jury decisions and sentences can change depending on the ethnic makeup of the defendant
E: Duncan showed a clip without sound of a black man and white man engaged in an argument. In condition 1 the black man pushed the white man. in condition 2, the white man pushed the black man. In condition 1, 75% of the jury deemed it as violent compared to 17% in condition 2.
E: this shows that there is effects of race in the jury decision
P: HOWEVER
E: Abwender and Hough found there were no consistent effects of the defendant race, gender or attraction. e.g in race, whites showed no preference, blacks were lenient to blacks and Hispanics lenient to whites.
E: this suggests that racial bias has more complicated effect on jury decisions and is not consistent across ethnicity

Question 5

Para 4 - mock trials

Answer 5

mock trials are not credible as they dont have the emotional experience of having someone’s fate in your hands. they are also a lot shorter than real trials and often ask jurors to individually come to a conclusion which is not reflective of real jury that make decision in groups. This makes it difficult to apply findings

Question 6

Para 5 - alternative explanations

Answer 6

P: alternative explanations such as group dynamics can affect the decision made by the jury
E: the majority may sway the minority of the jury though normative or informational social influence. Normative social influence is shown in Asch’s line of research showing that 37% of participants publicly agreed with majority even though privately they disagreed just to fit in. Informative social influence is when they conform in order to be correct, e.g they didn’t listen to the case info properly
E: therefore, if a group has a foreperson, they may coerce the others to follow their opinions