Mock Jurors Research Articles

The influence of race on jurors' perceptions of lethal police use of force.

Many highly publicized police use-of-force encounters have recently occurred in the United States. This project primarily explored whether officer, juror, or victim race affects verdicts in trials involving police use of force. Because of recent conflicting research surrounding race and juror decision-making, we conducted an exploratory analysis on the interactive effects of juror, victim, and defendant race. We hypothesized that mock jurors with favorable perceptions of police legitimacy would be less likely to convict an officer charged with manslaughter. Four hundred sixteen (243 women, 170 men, three another gender; 263 White, 50 Asian, 44 Black, 41 Latine, four Native American, 14 another race/ethnicity) jury-eligible community members read a trial transcript involving a police officer charged with manslaughter, in which we manipulated victim and defendant race (Black, White), then rendered a verdict and answered a questionnaire. We found significant effects of police legitimacy and defendant race on verdicts. The main effect was qualified by an interaction between juror race/ethnicity and defendant race. Simple-slope analyses revealed no effect of defendant race for White mock jurors. In comparison, Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) mock jurors were significantly more likely to convict a White than a Black defendant. We also observed significant effects of police legitimacy, defendant race, and victim race on perceptions of the officer's use of force. Our analyses revealed that mock jurors were significantly more punitive when the defendant was White compared with Black, and they perceived the officer's use of force as significantly more excessive when the officer was White or the victim was Black. These effects appear to be driven primarily by BIPOC jurors. Mock jurors with more favorable perceptions of police legitimacy were significantly less likely to convict the officer and viewed his use of force as less excessive. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Defendant psychopathic traits, but not defendant gender, predict death penalty verdicts in mock-juror decision making

Perceptions of a defendant’s psychopathic personality traits can impact mock jurors’ decision making, yet findings on the relationship of jurors’ and defendants’ gender on legal decision making have been inconsistent. This study investigates the relationship between defendant prototypical gender-congruent or -incongruent psychopathic traits and mock jurors’ perception and sentencing recommendations. In a between-subject design, participants (N = 1,721) rendered a verdict and rated the extent to which they perceived the defendant as legally responsible, morally responsible, and their recidivism risk. Participants prescribed harsher punishments and held more negative perceptions of a defendant with psychopathic traits than a defendant without these traits. However, the defendant received similar punishment and was judged equally negatively in both gender-congruent and -incongruent conditions. Finally, while men were more likely to choose the death verdict, women held more negative views of the defendant. Thus, portrayal of psychopathic traits seems related to harsher sentencing independent of gender-specific trait variations.

The role of social desirability and establishing nonracist credentials on mock juror decisions about Black defendants.

Recently, experimental work on racial bias in legal settings has diverged from real-world field data demonstrating racial disparities, instead often producing null or potential overcorrection effects favoring Black individuals over White individuals. We explored the role of social desirability in these counterintuitive effects and tested whether allowing participants to establish nonracist moral credentials increased their willingness to convict a Black defendant. We predicted that establishing nonracist moral credentials would increase convictions of Black defendants-especially for participants likely to harbor racial bias and external motivation to control it. In two experiments, we randomly assigned White mock jurors (Study 1: N = 1,018; Study 2: N = 1,253) to establish nonracist moral credentials by acquitting a Black defendant in an initial case, acquit a White defendant in the same case, or see no prior case. Next, they judged an ambiguous case against a Black (Studies 1 and 2) or White (Study 2) defendant. After choosing verdicts, they provided open-ended guesses of what the study was about. Participants completed measures of explicit prejudice, motivations to control prejudice, and political orientation. Most participants who were asked to judge at least one Black defendant guessed that the study was about racial bias and convicted Black defendants less often than did those who guessed the study was about something else. White participants who established nonracist credentials were significantly more likely to convict Black defendants compared with White participants who did not establish nonracist credentials. Subsequent analyses revealed that conservatives showed this predicted credentialing pattern, whereas liberals did not. Credentialed liberals' convictions of Black defendants remained low; instead, they convicted White defendants more than did noncredentialed liberals. Social desirability plays a clear role in whether White people acquit Black defendants in experiments, which does not align with persistent racial bias in the legal system. Research participants' concern about looking prejudiced might undermine the validity of experiments investigating racial bias in legal settings by artificially inflating pro-Black judgments. The opportunity to credential oneself as nonracist, however, might make conservatives more comfortable making anti-Black legal judgments-whereas credentialed liberals continue to judge Black individuals more favorably than White individuals in legal settings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Racial bias in jury selection hurts mock jurors, not just defendants: Testing one potential intervention.

Prosecutors often use race as a basis for excluding Black jurors in cases with Black defendants. The current research tested whether this practice influences juror attitudes (Study 1). It also tested an intervention to prevent racially biased jury selection (Study 2). We predicted that participants exposed to the exclusion of Black prospective jurors would have more negative feelings compared with those who were not exposed to such exclusions (Study 1). We also predicted that participants taking on the role of a prosecutor would be more likely to exclude a Black (vs. White) prospective juror in a case with a Black defendant and that warnings against race-based decisions would result in elaborate race-neutral rationales for the exclusions (Study 2). In Study 1 (N = 228), participants witnessed a simulated jury selection process. For half of the participants, Black jurors were differentially excluded. In Study 2 (N = 298), participants selected between a Black and a White prospective juror for a case with a Black defendant. Exposure to race-based exclusions negatively impacted perceptions of fairness and emotional responses, especially for Black participants (Study 1). Participants were more likely to exclude a Black juror (vs. White juror) but gave race-neutral rationales for their decisions. The effect of race on juror selection was eliminated when participants were warned against using race as a basis for excluding jurors (Study 2). Race-motivated exclusions affect not only Black defendants, by depriving them of their right to a jury of their peers, but also the jurors who remain to deliberate. A warning could be a viable intervention for curbing the influence of race on prosecutorial decisions during jury selection. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Moral foundations and juror verdict justifications

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which mock jurors justified their verdict decisions using moral foundations language. Participants read a trial transcript describing a second-degree murder charge featuring an automatism plea (which negates the physical volition of a crime). They then provided a two-to-three sentence rationale for their verdict choice, which we coded for the contextually-valid presence of words from the Moral Foundations (MF) Dictionary. Mock jurors were most likely to use harm-related language in justifying murder votes. A qualitative description also revealed differences in the content of the justifications.

Supplemental Material for The Role of Social Desirability and Establishing Nonracist Credentials on Mock Juror Decisions About Black Defendants

Supplemental Material for The Role of Social Desirability and Establishing Nonracist Credentials on Mock Juror Decisions About Black Defendants

Supplemental Material for White Mock Jurors’ Moral Emotional Responses to Viewing Female Victim Photographs Depend on the Victim’s Race

Supplemental Material for White Mock Jurors’ Moral Emotional Responses to Viewing Female Victim Photographs Depend on the Victim’s Race

Supplemental Material for Racial Bias in Jury Selection Hurts Mock Jurors, Not Just Defendants: Testing One Potential Intervention

Supplemental Material for Racial Bias in Jury Selection Hurts Mock Jurors, Not Just Defendants: Testing One Potential Intervention

The effects of witness mental illness and use of special measures in court on individual mock juror decision-making

ABSTRACT It is unclear whether witness mental illness and special measures used with witnesses in court impacts juror decision-making. Participants (N = 204) from the general public and student population completed a measure assessing attitudes towards mental illness before reading a mock trial vignette where witness mental illness (depression, schizophrenia, no mental illness) and the special measure used in court (screen, intermediary, no special measure) were manipulated. Participants were then instructed to formulate judgements about the witness testimony provided (reliability, competency, credibility) and their likelihood of finding the defendant guilty. The findings showed that witnesses with depression were perceived as significantly more competent than witnesses with schizophrenia, or with no mental illness. Witnesses with depression were also perceived as significantly more competent than witnesses with schizophrenia when a screen was used in court. There was however no difference in competency ratings for witnesses with depression versus those with schizophrenia when no special measure was used, or when an intermediary was used, although witnesses with depression were still viewed more favourably overall. These findings suggest that some awareness of these biases is needed in court. Improving clarity about why special measures are used in court might also go some way towards addressing this issue.

Social cognitive processes explain bias in juror decisions.

Jury decisions are among the most consequential social decisions in which bias plays a notable role. While courts take measures to reduce the influence of non-evidentiary factors, jurors may still incorporate biases into their decisions. One common bias, crime-type bias, is the extent to which the perceived strength of a prosecutor's case depends on the severity of the crime. Moral judgment, affect and social cognition have been proposed as core processes underlying this and other biases. Behavioral evidence alone has been insufficient to distinguish these explanations. To identify the mechanism underlying crime-type bias, we collected functional magnetic resonance imaging patterns of brain activation from mock jurors reading criminal scenarios. Brain patterns from crime-type bias were most similar to those associated with social cognition (mentalizing and racial bias) but not affect or moral judgment. Our results support a central role for social cognition in juror decisions and suggest that crime-type bias and cultural bias may arise from similar mechanisms.

Can jurors be biased in their evaluation of third-party evidence within cases of rape?

Prior research has indicated that beliefs in rape myths can influence juror decision making in cases involving sexual assault, however, the phenomenon has been typically examined in relation to victim and defendant believability, as well as final verdicts. The current study observed mock jurors' evaluations of third-party witness evidence in alleged rape cases to determine whether these judgements were influenced by inherent rape myths. Participants (N = 196) took part in a mock juror experiment that included evidence from an eyewitness that was either in support of the defence, prosecution, or neutral. We found that males and individuals holding strong beliefs in rape myths were more likely to find defendants 'not guilty'. Additionally, participants endorsing rape myths were also more likely to view eyewitness evidence favourably, but only when it was in support of the defence. Our findings suggest that personal biases can influence the level of credence jurors place on case evidence, potentially through a confirmation bias.

The impact of developmental language disorder in a defendant's description on mock jurors' perceptions and judgements.

While it has been posited that young people with language needs may be viewed more negatively (e.g., as more rude, less cooperative) than those without language needs, the impact of knowing about a person's language needs on others' perceptions has yet to experimentally tested. To examine whether the presence of a developmental language disorder (DLD) diagnosis in a defendant's information would affect mock juror ratings of guilt, sentence length, credibility and blameworthiness. A total of 143 jury eligible participants read a vignette of a non-violent crime. Half of the participants (N = 73) were told the defendant has a diagnosis of DLD, while half (N = 70) were not told. Preregistered analyses found that DLD information affected ratings of credibility and blameworthiness, though not judgements of guilt or sentence length. Unregistered content analyses were applied to the justifications participants gave for their ratings: these suggested that participants who did not have the DLD information judged the defendant more on his personality and attitude, and drew more links to his (perceived) background, while participants who received the DLD information condition made more reference to him having cognitive problems. Unlike in previous studies of the impact of autism information, information about a defendant's DLD did not affect mock jurors' likelihood of finding them guilty, or lead participants to give longer sentences. However, our findings suggest knowing a person has DLD does affect others' perceptions of credibility and blameworthiness. What is already known on the subject There is already evidence that some conditions that affect communication, specifically autism, also affect juror perceptions. Research also shows that knowing whether or not a defendant has autism influences how jurors rate defendants. However, autism is not the only condition that is relevant to juror perceptions, as we also know that a high rate of young offenders have language needs, and many have language profiles like DLD. What this paper adds to existing knowledge There is little research on how behaviours associated with DLD impact others' perceptions. This study reports the impact of knowing about a defendant's DLD on juror perceptions, investigating whether knowing about DLD improves judgements on guilt, sentencing lengths, credibility and culpability. Beyond the content of youth offending, this study suggests behaviours associated with DLD lead people to form more negative judgements about youth with DLD. This is important because there is still a lack of awareness of DLD both in- and outside the criminal justice system. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? This study shows that knowing about a person's DLD has largely positive effects on others' perceptions of them. This implies that recognizing undetected language needs in young offenders, and supporting colleagues and members of the public to know what DLD is and how it affects people, is critical for youth with DLD to be judged fairly. This study will support the case for raising awareness of vulnerability within the youth justice population, and will assist in clinicians evidencing the need for our roles in justice settings.

Neural Support for Contributions of Utility and Narrative Processing of Evidence in Juror Decision Making.

Efforts to explain complex human decisions have focused on competing theories emphasizing utility and narrative mechanisms. These are difficult to distinguish using behavior alone. Both narrative and utility theories have been proposed to explain juror decisions, which are among the most consequential complex decisions made in a modern society. Here, we asked jury-eligible male and female subjects to rate the strength of a series of criminal cases while recording the resulting patterns of brain activation. We compared patterns of brain activation associated with evidence accumulation to patterns of brain activation derived from a large neuroimaging database to look for signatures of the cognitive processes associated with different models of juror decision-making. Evidence accumulation correlated with multiple narrative processes, including reading and recall. Of the cognitive processes traditionally viewed as components of utility, activation patterns associated with uncertainty, but not value, were more active with stronger evidence. Independent of utility and narrative, activations linked to reasoning and relational logic also correlated with increasing evidence. Hierarchical modeling of cognitive processes associated with evidence accumulation supported a more prominent role for narrative in weighing evidence in complex decisions. However, utility processes were also associated with evidence accumulation. These complementary findings support an emerging view that integrates utility and narrative processes in complex decisions.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The last decade has seen a sharply increased interest in narrative as a central cognitive process in human decision-making and as an important factor in the evolution of human societies. However, the roles of narrative versus utility models of decision-making remain hotly debated. While available models frequently produce similar behavioral predictions, they rely on different cognitive processes and so their roles can be separated using the right neural tests. Here, we use brain imaging during mock juror decisions to show that cognitive processes associated with narrative, and to a lesser extent utility, were engaged while subjects evaluated evidence. These results are consistent with interactions between narrative and utility processes during complex decision-making.

The Effect of Heuristic Cues on Jurors’ Systematic Information Processing in Rape Trials

There is concern that jurors’ decisions in rape trials might be influenced by misleading cues (e.g., victim stereotypes) potentially explaining disproportionately low conviction rates. We investigated the bias hypothesis from the heuristic–systematic model as an explanation for how jurors may be influenced by misleading stereotypes even while they are effortfully processing rape trial evidence. We expected that when case evidence was ambiguous, stereotypes would guide motivated participants’ effortful information processing, but not when case evidence was strong. Mock jurors ( N = 901) were asked to make decisions about a rape trial with either ambiguous or strong evidence in which the complainant was either stereotypically distressed or unemotional giving evidence. Participants were either placed under high motivation conditions to encourage effortful information processing or in a control condition with low motivation instructions to encourage less effortful processing as a comparison. Participants’ information processing and case decisions were measured as key dependent variables. We found partial support for the hypothesized interaction and the bias hypothesis, suggesting that the types of evidence participants attended to in decision-making were influenced by misleading stereotypical cues. Our findings have implications for interventions to reduce the effect of misleading stereotypes on decisions in rape trials. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843221118018 .

Handle with care: Jury deliberation and demeanour-based assessments of witness credibility

It is unclear how effectively jurors perform their task of assessing witness credibility. Drawing on evidence from a mock jury study involving 863 mock jurors deliberating across 64 juries, and building on existing research, this paper explores juries’ reliance on demeanour. While jurors make use of factors which the research literature suggests are often appropriate credibility markers, for example external consistency of accounts, there is cause for concern over the nuance with which jurors apply those assessments in high stakes contexts. The manner in which jurors look to manner of delivery as evidence of credibility is also problematic. The paper makes the case for a more circumspect approach towards jurors’ use of demeanour assessments. At a minimum, this requires that judicial directions no longer advocate their reliability, but remind jurors of the complexities associated with such assessments and the need to treat any conclusions grounded on presentational cues with caution.

The Influence of Victim Sexual Orientation, Gender, and Gender Identity on Mock Jurors’ Judgments

The Influence of Victim Sexual Orientation, Gender, and Gender Identity on Mock Jurors’ Judgments

Factors that Influence Mock Jurors’ Perceptions of Child Credibility

ABSTRACT Child sexual abuse (CSA) remains a significant societal problem; however, few CSA cases are actually brought to trial. The cases that do proceed to trial typically involve little evidence, therefore, it is imperative that legal professionals become more aware of possible factors that may contribute to jurors’ perceptions of child complainants and in turn influence their case decisions. The goal of this study was to investigate the influence of jury instructions, child complainant age, child’s level of sexual knowledge, and preexisting beliefs about CSA on mock jurors’ child credibility ratings. Participants (N = 388) evaluated a mock CSA trial transcript and answered questions related to the child’s credibility. Results indicated that child credibility was dependent on mock jurors’ knowledge about CSA, which in turn, differed by mock juror gender. Pre-evidence jury instructions also influenced mock jurors’ CSA misconception endorsements. Child sexual knowledge level did not influence credibility, nor did it interact with child age. Our study suggests that specialized pre-evidence jury instructions may educate legal fact finders about alleged CSA victims and in turn may enhance their views of children in this specific legal context.

COVID-19 and the courtroom: exploring the effects of camera angle on jury perception of expert witness credibility during virtual testimony

Since the onset of COVID-19, expert witness testimony has been delivered virtually in judge-alone trials in Ontario with increasing frequency. It is unknown how controllable technological factors in the virtual environment – such as camera angle – may influence jury perception of expert witness credibility. This study assesses whether camera angle has a significant effect on juror perception of expert witness credibility. Jury-eligible participants from Ontario (n = 72) acted as mock jurors in four mock drug trafficking trials involving the same virtual forensic toxicology testimony. The control group (n = 34) watched an expert who was shown from the mid-chest up, whereas the experimental group (n = 38) watched an expert who had their camera angle set to show only their head. Using the Witness Credibility Scale (WCS), participants assessed expert credibility by completing 20 Likert-scale questions related to the expert’s knowledge, likeability, trustworthiness, and confidence. A Mann-Whitney U test indicated no significant difference between the control and experimental groups (p = 0.66, p > 0.05). Therefore, camera angle has no significant impact on juror perception of expert witness credibility, suggesting that experts can use either angle when testifying virtually. This research may help to inform future best practices for virtual expert testimony, enhancing quality and standardization.

Mock juror decisions regarding an undocumented immigrant: Similarity of defendant-juror ethnicity matters

Hispanic and White undergraduates (N = 238) read an online scenario depicting a Hispanic defendant on trial; defendant documentation status (undocumented, natural-born citizen) and defendant background (more sympathetic, less sympathetic) were varied. White participants saw the Hispanic defendant as generally more likely to commit a crime than Hispanic participants. White participants also saw the undocumented defendant as most likely to be guilty, while Hispanic participants saw the undocumented defendant as least likely to be guilty. These results suggest that defendant-juror similarity has an impact on juror decisions, even when the defendant is undocumented, a finding important for those selecting jurors.

Is all prejudice created equal? The role of modern and aversive racism in mock juror decisions

The current study examined whether aversive and modern racists would convict Black defendants differently based on theoretical differences: aversive racists are egalitarian and discriminate when not reminded of their values, whereas modern racists do not espouse egalitarian values and discriminate when a non-racial reason exists to justify their behavior. Participants read a criminal trial where defendant race (Black vs. White), race salience (present vs. absent), and justification (weak vs. strong evidence) were manipulated. Results showed that aversive and modern racists convicted the Black defendant at similar rates, but aversive racists were more likely to convict the White than the Black defendant. Aversive racists were also more egalitarian and less socially conservative. The finding that aversive racists convict Black and White defendants differently, but modern racists did not, suggests the importance of distinguishing aversive and modern racists to obtain a more complete picture of racial discrimination in juror decision making.