Psychology and the Courtroom (4)

Question 1

How does the UK court system work?

Answer 1

• adversarial system: a jury reaches a verdict based on the case made against the defendant by the prosecution and the case for them by the defence
• jury made up of 12 randomly selected members of the public aged between 18 and 70 –> must attend or else fined
• should assume the defendant is innocent until proven guilty but should reach their decision only based on evidence

Question 2

What individual factors might affect whether we perceive someone as guilty or not?

Answer 2

• Castellow et al found when the defendant was attractive they were found guilty by 56% of participants, compared to 76% when unattractive
• when the victim was attractive, the defendant was found guilty by 77% of participants, compared to 55% when unattractive
• Penrod and Cutler examined 9 different variables and found that the most significant difference in the number of participants giving a guilty verdict was the confidence level given by the witness
• when the witness said they were 80% confident, 60% gave a guilty verdict, compared to 67% when the witness said they were 100% confident
• Lakoff found that when witnesses use “hedges” in their testimony (e.g. ‘I think’ or ‘perhaps’) then they are seen as less believable
• Ross et al found female jurors were more likely to find a defendant guilty than male jurors when a child gave evidence against them (58% compared to 38%)

Question 3

What was the background to Dixon’s study?

Answer 3

• accents may affect listeners’ impressions of speakers (Giles et al) with received pronunciation being perceived most positively
• found Birmingham accents are perceived significantly more negatively than others
• Seggie examined the effect of three regional accents on raters’ attributions of guilt and found significant differences but that this varied by crime type
• those with broad Australian accents more likely to be perceived guilty of blue collar crime, whereas British accents more likely to be perceived guilty of white collar crimes

Question 4

What was the aim of Dixon’s study?

Answer 4

To investigate whether suspects with a Brummie accent would be more likely to be perceived as guilty, and how this interacted with their race and the type of crime they were accused of

Question 5

What method did Dixon use?

Answer 5

• lab experiment
• independent groups design
• three IVs: accent, race, type of crime
• took place at University College Worcester and used sample of 119 white psychology undergrad students
• DV: participants’ attribution of guilt, operationalised using seven point scale from innocent to guilty
• also measured language attitudes using a speech evaluation instrument
• participants who grew up in Birmingham eliminated

Question 6

What was the procedure of Dixon’s experiment?

Answer 6

• students listened to audio tape based on a real interview recorded at a British police station in 1995
• involved a middle aged male police officer interviewing a young male suspect who pleads his innocence
• recreated using actors: standard accented man in his mid 40s as inspector and a man in his 20s as the suspect who could switch between standard and brummie
• one tape made for white collar cheque fraud, the other for blue collar armed burglary
• description of suspect altered to either black or white in the script
• pilot study used to establish validity of the accents –> 95% could correctly identify them
• participants rated extent to which they felt the suspect was guilty on a 7 point likert scale and completed the Speech Evaluation Instrument

Question 7

What were the results of Dixon’s study?

Answer 7

• Brummie accents rated significantly lower in superiority, confirming previous findings that non-standard speakers score lower on competence-related measures
• Brummie suspects significantly more likely to be rated as guilty than standard accent suspects
• significant relationship between perception of guilt and perception of superiority and attractiveness
• black participants not rated significantly more guilty than white participants
• participant in the black, Brummie accented, blue collar crime condition received the highest guilt rating
• Dixon suggests this may explain why Brummie speakers are more likely to be found guilty, as their accent is perceived as less self assured or less confident and therefore associated with being untrustworthy

Question 8

How can research into memory help influence jury decision making?

Answer 8

• research shows we are likely to remember info at the beginning and at the end of a list particularly well –> could lead us to present the most persuasive witness first
• however, we also tend to remember info better when the story follows a chronological order
• Pennington and Hastie showed that when one legal team presented testimony in chronological order, the jury found in favour of that team

Question 9

What effect does drawing attention to inadmissible evidence have in influencing jury decision making?

Answer 9

• drawing attention to inadmissible evidence with a legal explanation has been shown to have the opposite to the desired effect on jurors –> the reactance effect
• they pay more attention to it rather than less (Pickel)
• Wolf and Montgomery found in trials where participants were instructed to ignore inadmissible evidence, participants ignored the instructions and found in favour of the side presenting it

Question 10

How has the use of an expert witness been shown to influence jury decision making?

Answer 10

• use of an expert witness has been shown to be a persuasive tool when they describe the reasons why the witness was in a good/bad position to identify the perpetrator (Cutler et al)

Question 11

How does forensic evidence influence jury decision making?

Answer 11

• jurors who watch lots of crime drama may be undesirable as a result of the “CSI effect”
• crime dramas present forensic evidence as “high tech magic” and therefore leads jurors to expect too much of the prosecution, increasing the risk of type II errors (Schweitzer and Saks)