Abstract
With the use of expert evidence increasing in civil and criminal trials, there is concern jurors' decisions are affected by factors that are irrelevant to the quality of the expert opinion. Past research suggests that the likeability of an expert significantly affects juror attributions of credibility and merit. However, we know little about the effects of expert likeability when detailed information about expertise is provided. Two studies examined the effect of an expert's likeability on the persuasiveness judgments and sentencing decisions of 456 jury-eligible respondents. Participants viewed and/or read an expert's testimony (lower vs. higher quality) before rating expert persuasiveness (via credibility, value, and weight), and making a sentencing decision in a Capitol murder case (death penalty vs. life in prison). Lower quality evidence was significantly less persuasive than higher quality evidence. Less likeable experts were also significantly less persuasive than either neutral or more likeable experts. This “penalty” for less likeable experts was observed irrespective of evidence quality. However, only perceptions of the foundational validity of the expert's discipline, the expert's trustworthiness and the clarity and conservativeness of the expert opinion significantly predicted sentencing decisions. Thus, the present study demonstrates that while likeability does influence persuasiveness, it does not necessarily affect sentencing outcomes.
Highlights
Expert evidence is ubiquitous in modern civil and criminal trials (Gross, 1991; Diamond, 2007; Jurs, 2016)
We found that participants’ perceptions of persuasiveness were significantly affected by evidence quality and expert likeability whereby higher quality and higher likeability experts were more persuasive than lower quality and lower likeability experts
We found that subjective perceptions of the eight Expert Persuasion Expectancy (ExPEx) attributes and likeability together accounted for ∼80% of the variance in persuasiveness scores, which demonstrates these attributes have strong predictive power
Summary
Expert evidence is ubiquitous in modern civil and criminal trials (Gross, 1991; Diamond, 2007; Jurs, 2016). According to ELM, limited cognitive resources and insufficient knowledge increase reliance on readily accessible but potentially irrelevant, peripheral aspects of a message (Petty and Cacioppo, 1984, 1986; San JoséCabezudo et al, 2009; Salerno et al, 2017). This theory is supported by evidence suggesting that when information is unfamiliar, highly technical or complex—as is often the case for expert
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