Pennington And Hastie: Order Of Testimony Flashcards
What were the two orders they were investigating?
Story order and witness order
What was the aim of this study?
To find out if the way if order was important in affecting the decisions of the jury.
What type of experiment is the study?
It is a laboratory experiment.
How many participants took part in this study?
130 students from Northwestern University and Chicago University who were paid for participation.
How long was the experiment?
One hour
How many conditions were the participants placed into?
4 in roughly equal numbers
What is story order and witness order?
Story order is listening/recalling events in the order in which they happened.
Witness order is putting the best witnesses you have first and putting your worst ones last.
What did the participants have to listen to in the study?
They had to listen to a stimulus trial (Commonwealth of Massachusetts V Caldwell).
What were the participants required to do after listening to the trial?
They were asked to reach a guilty or not guilty verdict on a murder charge. They then had to rate their confidence of their decision on a 5 point scale.
How did Pennington and Hastie ensure that the participants did not interact with each other?
They put up partitions.
What were the four conditions that the participants were placed into?
39 prosecution items in story order
39 defence items in story order
39 prosecution items in witness order
39 defence items in witness order
Did the trials, that were shown to the participants, different, similar or all the same?
They were all the same. They began with an indictment and followed the normal procedure, ending with the judges instructions.
Which order persuaded more jurors of Caldwell’s guilt?
Story Order
If the defence presented it’s evidence in witness order, what happened to the guilty verdict?
Even more jurors found Caldwell guilty.
If the defence presented in story order, then what happened to the guilty rates?
They dropped to 31%.
