Juror Judgments Research Articles

The Role of Resistance and Emotionality in Sexual Assault Trials

Women’s behaviour during and after a sexual assault is often considered as an indicator of whether they are genuine victims. The current study explores the influence of victim resistance and victim emotionality on juror decision-making to determine if such stereotypes influence perceptions of sexual assault. Participants (n = 210) were assigned to one of four conditions where victim resistance (high vs low) and victim emotionality (high vs low) were manipulated. Results showed that victim resistance had a significant effect on juror judgments. In the high resistance conditions, more guilty verdicts were chosen and victims were perceived as more credible, less blameworthy, and less demonstrative of consent. Participant gender also had a significant influence on juror judgments. Meanwhile, emotionality only influenced some judgments, namely victim stereotypicality and chosen verdict. These findings demonstrate the need for education to challenge persisting rape myths that harm sexual assault victims and court proceedings.

Juror perceptions of incentivized informant testimony

ABSTRACT The limited existing research on how jurors evaluate informant testimony suggests jurors may not be appropriately responsive to cues that could signal informant unreliability. In particular, jurors may fail to account for and properly weigh evidence that an informant is testifying for an incentive when reaching a verdict. However studies in this area have some limitations in case type, materials used, and statistical power. The objective of the current study is to advance the research in each of these areas and provide new evidence about the impact of juror perceptions of informant incentives. This study used a novel fact pattern, video stimuli manipulations, and a large sample pool to test the impact of informant incentives on juror judgments. Participants who observed a highly incentivized informant, but not those who observed less incentivized informants, were more likely to acquit compared to participants who viewed an otherwise identical non-incentivized informant. Participants were also sensitive to incentive size in making situational attributions about the informant's motivation to testify. The results suggest that jurors may be capable of accounting for informant incentives in reaching a verdict, but only when the incentive size is substantial.

Juror characteristics on trial: Investigating how psychopathic traits, rape attitudes, victimization experiences, and juror demographics influence decision-making in an intimate partner rape trial.

Trial by jury is a longstanding legal tradition used in common law jurisdictions to try the most serious of criminal cases. Yet, despite hearing the same trial evidence, individual jurors often arrive at different verdict decisions, indicating that they may be impacted by more than the evidence presented at trial. This study therefore sought to investigate the role of jurors' psychopathology, attitudinal, experiential, and demographic characteristics upon individual verdict decisions. Adopting an improved mock trial paradigm, 108 jury-eligible participants took part in one of nine identical 12-person mock trial simulations depicting a videotaped recreation of an intimate partner rape trial. Pre-trial, mock-jurors completed a psychosocial survey capturing their psychopathic personality traits (affective and cognitive responsiveness, interpersonal manipulation; egocentricity), rape myth beliefs, victimization experiences and demographics. Post-trial, jurors deliberated to reach a collective group decision and individual verdict decisions were recorded pre- and post-deliberation. Binary logistic regression analyses revealed rape myth beliefs and juror ethnicity were significantly related to verdict decisions both pre- and post-deliberation. Post-deliberation, decreased affective responsiveness (empathy) and experience of sexual victimization were also found to be significant predictors of guilty verdict selections. These findings indicate for the first time that within an intimate-partner rape trial, certain psychosocial traits, crime-specific attitudes, and experiences of sexual victimization appear to predispose juror judgments and decision-making even after group-deliberation. This study therefore has important implications for understanding how individual differences among jurors may impact rape trial verdict outcomes and the need for targeted juror reforms.

Eyewitness confidence and mock juror decisions of guilt: A meta-analytic review.

We investigated the impact of eyewitness confidence on the following dependent variables: (a) guilty or not-guilty verdict; (b) judgments of guilt as measured on a scale; and (c) mock jurors' perception of the accuracy of an eyewitness's identification. In addition, we examined two potential moderators of the effects of eyewitness confidence: (a) whether the eyewitness expressed confidence at trial versus during the initial lineup identification and (b) whether the eyewitness provided a numerical versus a verbal statement of confidence. We expected all analyses to reveal that highly confident eyewitnesses are more persuasive to mock jurors than are eyewitnesses with lower confidence (Hypothesis 1). We expected eyewitness confidence at trial (relative to at identification) to be more persuasive to mock jurors (Hypothesis 2). We expected numerical expressions of confidence to be more persuasive to mock jurors than verbal confidence expressions (Hypothesis 3). We conducted a meta-analysis of 35 studies from 20 published papers and seven theses or dissertations to quantify the effect of eyewitness confidence on juror judgments and investigated the influence of two primary moderator variables, time of confidence and format of confidence expression. All analyses revealed an effect of eyewitness confidence on mock juror decisions (gs = .21-.36). Our moderator analysis showed that the timing of the confidence statement (identification vs. trial) did not affect the influence of eyewitness confidence on mock jurors' judgments of guilt or accuracy. The influence of eyewitness confidence was not moderated by verbal versus numerical expressions of confidence. Although eyewitness confidence is persuasive to mock jurors, the size of this effect is modest. Moreover, verbal and numerical expressions of confidence have similar persuasive effects, and mock jurors do not appear to be sensitive to the likely difference in evidentiary strength of eyewitness confidence expressed at the initial identification versus at trial. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The Politics of Climate Change and Materiality in Accounting Disclosures: Evidence from Juror Judgments

The Politics of Climate Change and Materiality in Accounting Disclosures: Evidence from Juror Judgments

Effect of pretrial publicity via social media, mock juror sex, and rape myth acceptance on juror decisions in a mock sexual assault trial

ABSTRACT Determining the influence of irrelevant victim information on potential jurors is particularly important in the current age of social media. The present study explored the effects of pretrial publicity concerning the complainant shared via social media posts, mock juror sex, and rape myth acceptance on mock juror judgments in a sexual assault case. One hundred and fifty-six community members residing in the United States (77 males, 78 females, 1 decline to answer) over the age of 18 were randomly assigned to view either pro-complainant (n = 52), anti-complainant (n = 53), or control (n = 51) messaging in social media posts before reading a mock sexual assault trial transcript, completing a post-trial questionnaire, and answering questions about rape myth acceptance. Results indicated that participants in the anti-complainant condition were significantly less likely to select a guilty verdict compared to the control condition. Male participants and those that believed consent was present were also significantly less likely to select a guilty verdict. Moreover, participants with higher rape myth acceptance were more likely to believe that the complainant had consented. Results highlight social media as a potential source of exposure of inadmissible pretrial information that may influence trial outcomes.

The Effects of High Estimate Uncertainty in Auditor Negligence Litigation*

We examine how jurors' negligence judgments and attorneys' out‐of‐court settlements are differently impacted by two features of a materially misstated accounting estimate—the amount of estimate uncertainty and whether the misstated account is disaggregated into its own line‐item or aggregated with other accounts into a single financial statement line‐item. We predict and find that jurors and attorneys react to estimate uncertainty in opposite directions under common conditions. This finding is important because when jurors' judgments and attorneys' settlements differ, research into juror judgments alone may not capture a complete picture of auditor liability because the vast majority of audit litigation is resolved by attorneys in out‐of‐court settlement without ever going to trial. Consistent with attribution theory, results from our first experiment show that jurors hold auditors more responsible for misstatements of lower estimate uncertainty when the misstated account is disaggregated, as opposed to misstatements that are of higher uncertainty and/or aggregated with other, accurate accounts. However, in a second experiment we find that attorneys negotiate auditor settlements under the incorrect assumption that jurors will hold auditors more responsible for failing to prevent misstatements of higher uncertainty. Our results illustrate that accounting research should not focus solely on juror judgments in the study of how specific factors impact auditor liability, and that attorneys would benefit from a better understanding of juror decision making.

PRACTITIONER SUMMARY When does utilizing valuation specialists reduce auditors' litigation risk?

This article summarizes "The effects of specialist type and estimate aggressiveness on juror judgments of auditor negligence" (Brown, Grenier, Pyzoha, and Reffett 2019), which examines two critical factors auditors consider when auditing complex estimates: the type of specialist to engage and the relative aggressiveness of the estimate. In an experiment involving an alleged audit failure, jurors were less likely to find auditors negligent when the auditors consulted with a valuation specialist, but only when managements' estimate was deemed to be more aggressive. The study does not find similar litigation benefits of using a specialist for a less aggressive estimate. A second experiment extended these results by demonstrating jurors were less likely to find auditors negligent when the auditors consulted with an external rather than an internal specialist, because jurors perceived external specialists as having greater independence from the client. Further, the litigation benefits of using an external specialist extended to circumstances when auditors who initially engaged an internal specialist also brought in an external specialist to review the internal specialist's work. The study concludes that utilizing external specialists, to either test management estimates or to review internal specialists' work, can limit auditors' litigation exposure, especially when auditing aggressive management estimates.

When Does Utilizing Valuation Specialists Reduce Auditors' Litigation Risk?

SUMMARY This article summarizes “The Effects of Specialist Type and Estimate Aggressiveness on Juror Judgments of Auditor Negligence” (Brown, Grenier, Pyzoha, and Reffett 2019), which examines two critical factors auditors consider when auditing complex estimates: type of specialist to engage and relative estimate aggressiveness. In an experiment involving an alleged audit failure, jurors were less likely to find auditors negligent when the auditors consulted with a valuation specialist, but only when managements' estimate was more aggressive. The study does not find similar litigation benefits of using a specialist for a less aggressive estimate. A second experiment extended these results by demonstrating that jurors were less likely to find auditors negligent when the auditors consulted with an external rather than an internal specialist. Further, the benefits of using an external specialist extended to auditors who initially engaged an internal specialist and brought in an external specialist to review the internal specialist's work.

Sounding guilty: How accent bias affects juror judgments of culpability

Black Americans and Mexican Americans have faced continued cultural stereotypes, as well as more punitive outcomes, within the judicial system. Very little research has explored whether minority defendants with stereotypical accents face additional discrimination. The current study investigated the role of race and accent bias on juror decisions for Black, Mexican American, or White defendants in a negligence case. Results indicated that while Black and Mexican American defendants were found more negligent than White defendants, Black defendants were judged more negatively than White and Mexican American defendants, especially when the Black defendant had a stereotypical accent. The results offer important legal considerations that attorneys must make when deciding whether or not to recommend that the defendant testify.

“I Did It, But Not Like That”: Effects of Factually Incorrect Confessions on Juror Judgments

Several high-profile cases involving wrongful convictions have featured factually incorrect confessions (i.e., confessions that contradicted case facts). The current research investigated the effects of factually incorrect confessions on juror judgments. In Experiment 1, participants read a trial transcript, containing either no confession, a factually correct confession, or a factually incorrect confession after a 1-hour or 10-hour interrogation. Afterwards, participants judged the coerciveness of the confession, guilt of the suspect and named accomplice, and strength of the prosecution’s case. Experiment 2 used confessions with different factual errors and different interrogation lengths. Participants made the same legal judgments. In both experiments, participants rated a factually incorrect confession as more coerced than a factually correct confession. Participants fully discounted factually incorrect confessions when evaluating a defendant’s guilt. However, compared to conditions with no confession, participants perceived a named accomplice as guiltier and the prosecution’s case as stronger when the defendant provided a factually incorrect confession.

The Contemporary American Jury

The contemporary American jury is more inclusive than ever before, although multiple obstacles continue to make racial and ethnic representation a work in progress. Drastic contraction has also occurred: The rate of jury trials is at an all-time low, dampening the signal that jury verdicts provide to the justice system, reducing the opportunity for jury service, and potentially threatening the legitimacy of judgments. At the same time, new areas of jury research have been producing important explanations for how the jury goes about reaching its verdict in response to challenging questions, like how to assess damages. Yet the persistent focus on individual juror judgments as opposed to decision making by the jury as a group leaves unanswered important questions about how jury performance is influenced by a primary distinctive feature of the jury: the deliberation process.

Researching Juror Judgment and Decision Making in Cases of Alleged Auditor Negligence: A Toolkit for New Scholars

ABSTRACT This paper provides methodological guidance to individuals interested in audit-related, juror judgment and decision-making (JDM) research. Specifically, we discuss key issues surrounding experimental design including participant selection, case selection and design, and identifying important independent, process, and dependent variables—discussions often omitted from published research in this area. We also address several issues encountered during the review process and through discussions with or presentations by other scholars. Overall, this paper is aimed at (1) increasing scholars', particularly newer scholars', awareness of the different design options that are available when planning juror JDM studies; (2) enhancing scholars' understanding of the costs and benefits of those options; and (3) helping scholars better foresee how different design choices ultimately will impact the inferences that can be drawn from their studies. Thus, this paper provides an easily accessible resource to help newer scholars make more informed choices when planning juror JDM studies. Further, this paper should help individuals who are interested in audit-related juror JDM, but who are not active researchers in this area (e.g., archival researchers, practitioners), better understand the methods used to conduct, and the inferences drawn from, juror JDM studies. Finally, we hope that some of the principles discussed are helpful to newer scholars beyond the juror JDM setting.

The Effects of Specialist Type and Estimate Aggressiveness on Juror Judgments of Auditor Negligence

Auditors often rely on specialists to establish reasonable ranges for management estimates. While the main purported benefit of using specialists is increased audit effectiveness, prior research suggests that using specialists can also provide litigation protection for auditors. We predict and provide experimental evidence that the extent of such litigation protection depends on the relative aggressiveness of the estimate and the type of specialist used. Specifically, when auditors use a specialist to develop a reasonable range for an estimate, jurors view auditors’ acceptance of a relatively aggressive management estimate as more justifiable and thus are less likely to find the auditors negligent. This effect, however, does not occur when auditors accept less aggressive estimates. Further, the observed effects are stronger when auditors use external rather than internal specialists. Overall, this study indicates that utilizing specialists, particularly external specialists, may provide superior litigation protection for auditors who accept relatively aggressive management estimates.

A Validation Study of the Need for Affect Questionnaire–Short Form in Legal Contexts

ABSTRACTWe evaluated the psychometric properties of scores on the Need for Affect–Short Form (NAQ–S) in 3 samples: undergraduate students (Sample I), jury-eligible community members (Sample II), and forensic clinicians (Sample III). Concerning factor structure, the NAQ–S 2-factor structure displayed good fit to the data in Sample I, with mostly acceptable levels of internal consistency for both approach and avoidance scores. Construct validity patterns were observed such that approach scores were most strongly correlated with female gender and trait agreeableness scores, whereas avoidance scores were most strongly correlated to trait agreeableness scores. Criterion validity associations emerged in that approach scores displayed main effects on mock juror judgments in hate crimes, and forensic clinician judgments of violence risk estimation. Finally, avoidance scores displayed moderating effects on recommended sentencing length by hate crime victim type. Implications are discussed for emotion in legal decision making and future research.

The Effects of Independent Expert Recommendations on Juror Judgments of Auditor Negligence

SUMMARYAudit firms claim that they are subject to unreasonable litigation risk and that legal reforms are needed. One frequently proposed reform is to utilize independent (i.e., court-appointed) experts to examine case facts and provide recommendations to the court. This study provides theory and evidence to examine the general effects of such recommendations on jurors' judgments and, also, more specifically, to inform critics' concerns that jurors will merely “rubber stamp” independent experts' recommendations. Results of an experiment indicate that independent experts' recommendations shift jurors' judgments in the direction of the recommendation, but that such effects depend on jurors' perceptions of the experts' credibility. Further, consistent with critics' concerns, independent experts' recommendations reduce jurors' sensitivity to specific case facts in some, but not all, contexts. Specifically, when the experts conclude that the auditors were negligent, jurors' negligence judgments are insensitive to variation in specific case facts (the auditors' use versus nonuse of a specialist), but are sensitive to such variation when the experts conclude that the auditors were not negligent. Implications for theory, practice, and regulation are discussed.Data Availability: Available from the authors upon request.

Do they matter? A meta-analytic investigation of individual characteristics and guilt judgments.

Many people believe the personal attributes of trial participants substantially impact the decisions of juries, and considerable research has examined the extent to which characteristics of jurors and defendants are associated with juror judgments of guilt. To assess this broad issue, we meta-analyzed empirical studies examining the relationship between 11 juror and defendant characteristics and individual-level judgments of guilt in criminal trial contexts. Three potential moderator variables were also investigated: participant type, outcome type, and case type. In total, 464 effects were obtained from 272 published and unpublished studies. The 11 focal characteristics yielded sample-weighted mean correlations ranging from zero to .22 in magnitude, with the strongest overall relationships emerging for defendant socioeconomic status (.11), defendant criminal record (.12), juror authoritarianism (.17), and juror trust in the legal system (.22). There was, however, substantial evidence of moderation for 10 of the 11 characteristics, suggesting their overall relationships vary according to one or more other variables. Moderator analyses revealed little support for participant type, some support for outcome type, and good support for case type with regard to their ability to explain variation in the observed effects. Overall, several juror and defendant characteristics were associated strongly enough with guilt judgments to warrant the attention of scholars and legal practitioners, and the results of this work add to our understanding of extralegal bias and juror decision making.

Can Explicit Instructions Reduce Expressions of Implicit Bias? New Questions Following a Test of a Specialized Jury Instruction

Judges, lawyers, and court staff have long recognized that explicit, or consciously endorsed, racial prejudices have no place in the American justice system. However, more subtle biases or prejudices can operate automatically, without awareness, intent, or conscious control. Members of the court community are beginning to identify this subtler form of racial bias, or implicit racial bias, as a partial explanation for persistent racial disparities in the criminal justice system. In the absence of empirically vetted interventions, some judges have created and currently use their own specialized jury instructions in hopes of minimizing expressions of such bias in juror judgment. However, depending on how these instructions are crafted, they may produce unintended, undesirable effects (e.g., by increasing expressions of bias against socially disadvantaged group members among certain types of individuals, or by making jurors feel more confident about their decision(s) without actually reducing expressions of bias in judgment). To prevent the distribution and implementation of jury instructions that may do more harm than good, any instruction of this kind must be carefully evaluated. In the present study, the authors sought to examine the efficacy of one specialized implicit bias jury instruction. Mock jurors who received the specialized instruction evaluated the strength of the defense’s case in subtly different ways from those who received a control instruction, but the instruction did not appear to significantly influence juror verdict preference, confidence, or sentence severity. Interestingly, the authors were unable to replicate with this sample the traditional baseline pattern of juror bias observed in other similar studies (c.f., Sommers & Ellsworth, 2000; Sommers & Ellsworth, 2001), which prevented a complete test of the value of the instructional intervention. Authors address several possible explanations for this failure to replicate, explore the possibility of shifts in cultural awareness and in the spontaneous correction for bias, and discuss implications for future work.

The Effect of Electrophysiological Neuroscientific Deception Detection Evidence on Juror Judgments in a Criminal Trial

There are concerns that if neuroscientific deception detection evidence becomes admissible in court, jurors may weigh it inappropriately. We investigated whether mock jurors were influenced more by electrophysiological than behavioral evidence that a defendant in a criminal trial was lying. Participants’ perceptions of evidence quality predicted verdict choice, and quality ratings were higher for neuroscientific than for behavioral evidence. However, both types of evidence increased guilty verdicts similarly, and the inclusion of neuroimages had no additional impact. These findings suggest that neuroscientific evidence may be processed differently than other types of deception evidence, but it is not necessarily more persuasive.

Understanding the Power of Law: Engaging Students in Criminal Law Casework

This article considers the embedding of the ‘Ethics and Professional Responsibility’ graduate attribute into two subjects at the Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney: Ethics and Professional Conduct, and Evidence and Criminal Procedure. The focus is on an aspect of how law students are taught to ‘think like a lawyer’ and make legal decisions that require ethical judgment specifically narrative intelligence and the emotional content of ethical judgment. The content of two teaching and learning strategies that incorporate emotional knowledge will be explained. The purpose of the strategy in Ethics and Professional Conduct is to equip students with an understanding of the impact of emotions on ethical judgment and the need for emotional self-awareness. The purpose of the strategy in Evidence and Criminal Procedure is to equip students with an understanding of the ethical implications of how lawyers use emotion persuasively and tactically to influence juror judgment. Cognitive philosophy is applied in these strategies to exhibit how emotion within narratives can be the subject of analysis and how lawyers use emotion to influence juror decisionmaking and whether, and in what circumstances, this is ethical.