psychology of jurors ii

Question 1

goals in juries

Answer 1

• fairness
• impartiality

Question 2

issues in juries

Answer 2

• human bias
• fallibility of memory for evidence and information
• influence of group decision making

Question 3

juror bias

Answer 3

• factors that result in a preference toward a certain trial outcome
• can result in unfair decision-making and injustice

Question 4

juror bias scale

Answer 4

• measures probability of commission and reasonable doubt

Question 5

probability of commission

Answer 5

• prior beliefs and attitudes surrounding evidence and conviction bias
• reflects how guilty the juror may perceive the defendant to be due to facing charges

Question 6

reasonable doubt

Answer 6

• measures how certain the juror needs to be before convicting

Question 7

protection against juror bias

Answer 7

• similar to research random selection, the expectation is that individual biases will average out across a jury
• requires that different biases will be spread across the jury

Question 8

pre-trial juror bias

Answer 8

• attitudes
• beliefs
• knowledge

Question 9

pre-trial juror bias (attitudes)

Answer 9

• juror bias scale accounted for 11.6% of the variance in pre-deliberation verdicts and 6.1% of the variance in post-deliberation verdicts
• probability of commission
• reasonable doubt (attitudes going into the trial that can affect the person)

Question 10

pre-trial bias (attitudes) pt 2

Answer 10

• conviction proneness (if someone is guilty, they should be caught)
• system confidence (when it’s the suspect vs. police, i believe the police)
• innate criminality (once a criminal, always a criminal)
• social justice

Question 11

pre-trial bias (exposure)

Answer 11

• jurors exposed to negative pre-trial publicity had a preference towards conviction

Question 12

trial bases may impact

Answer 12

• understanding, remembering, and considering evidence
• integration of information
• deliberation

Question 13

trial bias (cognitive)

Answer 13

• subjective perceptions of people that may influence their decisions and behaviours
• produced by: limited cognitive capacity, striving for efficiency in decision-making, personal experiences

Question 14

trial bias (pre-decisional distortion)

Answer 14

• pre-decisional preference toward a verdict impacts their interpretation of subsequent evidence
• pre-trial publicity influences jurors when the evidence presented at trial is ambiguous (carries into the trial)
• jurors experience biased interpretation of new evidence to support verdict that they are tentatively favouring through trial
• trial may drain cognitive resources and impact juror ability to attend to info

Question 15

trial biases (experts)

Answer 15

• an expert helps jurors understand the evidence presented
• must provide evidence of their expertise
• must be able to effectively communicate
• biased interpretations may snowball when passed onto jurors: perceived strength and objectivity of forensic science, experts work to be objective but may engage in subjective interpretations

Question 16

trial biases (post-evidence presentation)

Answer 16

• assumptions of deliberation
• random selection will result in biases cancelling each other out across jurors
• deliberation provides an opportunity to focus on facts rather than assumptions
• deliberation allowed extreme positions to be scrutinized by group
• some evidence that deliberations mitigate: biasing effects of pre-trial publicity, effects of other biasing information, challenged by other research that failed to find these results

Question 17

cautions: group decision making

Answer 17

• related to: groupthink, group polarization (if people have strong opinions, it could feel safer to decide whether guilty or not guilty because it’s “our” decision; diffusion of responsibility)
• can lead to: poor decision performance, extreme/biased positions

Question 18

bias recommendations

Answer 18

• screen out jurors with extreme perceptions or opinions
• strengthen evidence presented to remove ambiguity and mitigate impact of cognitive bias
• foster juror heterogeneity (different people)
• educate jurors about the impacts of bias and irrelevant contextual information

Question 18

caution: jury deliberations

Answer 18

• jurors who deliberated and were exposed to pre-trial publicity were worse at source monitoring
• jurors who are homogenous in biases my result in effects of biases being amplified

Question 19

juror memory

Answer 19

• memory of the evidence is a predictor for the decisions made in legal trials
• discussing evidence during deliberation may taint jurors’ memories of the evidence
• people are less likely to share unique or contradictory information in group decision-making

Question 20

jurors source monitoring

Answer 20

• need to determine if the info is introduced at trial or deliberation
• when misleading details from deliberation seem to fit with narrative at trial, the details are more likely to be attributed to trial evidence

Question 21

misinformation effect

Answer 21

• when people are provided misinformation about an event after it happened, it may be integrated into their memories for the event
• misinformation may be introduced during deliberation inadvertently
• misinformation more likely to be accepted when presented consistently by other jurors

Question 22

presentations of pro-defense misinformation

Answer 22

• significant decrease in ratings of guilt pre-to-post deliberation
• significant decrease in ratings of complainant credibility pre-to-post deliberation
• significant increase in ratings of strength of defense’s case pre-to-post deliberation
• participants in pro-defense condition misattributed misinformation to trial more than participants in pro-prosecution condition

Question 23

presentation of pro-prosecution misinformation

Answer 23

• odds of a guilty verdict post-deliberation were 2.983 times higher than in the pro-defense misinformation condition
• significant increase in ratings of the strength of the prosecution’s case pre- and post-deliberation