STUDIES - Englich and Mussweiler (2001)

Question 1

Aim

Answer 1

• To determine the effect of a prosecutor’s suggestion for sentencing on the decision-making of a judge

Question 2

Procedure

Answer 2

SAMPLE

• 19 young trial judges (15 male and 4 female) with an average age of 29 and 9 months of experience

STEPS

• Participants were given a scenario of a rape case
• Participants were given case materials with copies of penal code and were asked to read through the materials and form an opinion about the case (15 minutes)
• Participants were allocated to 2 conditions, where the prosecutor demanded:
  — Condition 1 (low anchor): Prosecutor demands 2-month sentence
  — Condition 2 (high anchor): Prosecutor demands 34-month sentence
• Participants were then given a questionnaire asking:
  — Q1: If they thought the sentence was too low, adequate, or too high
  — Q2: What sentence they would recommend
  — Q3: How certain they were about their sentencing decision (out of 9)
  — Q4: How realistic they thought this case was (out of 9)

Question 3

Results

Answer 3

• Q4: Average rating was 7.17/9 (strong)
• Q3: Average rating was 4.53/9 (weak), indicating the participants may have been aware of their influenced judgement
• Condition 1 (low anchor): Average sentence was 18.78 months (standard deviation of 9.11)
• Condition 2 (high anchor): Average sentence was 28.70 months (standard deviation of 6.53)
• When told that the prosecutor recommended a sentence of 34 months, participants recommended on average 10 months longer on prison than when told the sentence should be 2 months for the same crime

Question 4

Strengths

Answer 4

• True experiment: Allowed researchers to infer a cause-and-effect relationship between the value of the anchor and the sentence
• High reliability: Use of pilot group helped establish reasonable anchors

Question 5

Limitations

Answer 5

• Low internal validity: Use of independent samples design means that participant variability may have played role in results, meaning that it was a confounding variable
• Low generalisability: Hard to generalise as sample size is small and it was limited in courtroom experience, meaning that results can be generalised to only young and less experienced judges