Simulated Jury Research Articles

The Relation of Cognitive and Memorial Processes to Persuasion in a Simulated Jury Trial

Four experiments investigated the dependence of persuasion on cognitive factors. All experiments employed a court case for which 795 subjects acted as jury members, reading summaries of both the prosecution and defense's testimony. The amount of objective information on both sides of the case was varied. Persuasion was a position function of the number of prosecution arguments and the number of defense arguments. This finding was extended by obtaining measures of the subjects’cognitive reactions to the case as well as their opinions and by following both of these measures over time. Both analysis of variance and multiple regression techniques showed that subjects could have derived their opinions from their cognitions about the case. This relationship also held up over time. These results suggest the general form of an information-processing theory of persuasion. One prediction of this theory is for an asymptotic function relating objective information to persuasion. This prediction received empirical support.

Integration and Attribution Theories as Predictors of Sentencing by a Simulated Jury

Integration and Attribution Theories as Predictors of Sentencing by a Simulated Jury

A Simulated Jury Study: Characteristics of the Defendant and the Jurors

Summary In the present study, two samples of subjects differing in class and political orientation were tested in a simulated jury situation. The defendant, accused of negligent homicide, varied in the characteristics of race and attractiveness. Mean sentencing of the defendant was found to be a function of the characteristics of the jurors and of the attractiveness of the defendant. No main effect for race of the defendant was found. Further, a significant interaction between the subject sample—i.e. the jurors—and attractiveness of the defendant and between the subject sample and race of the defendant was found. The latter findings were discussed with reference to the child-rearing literature on class differences.

SIMULATED JURY DECISIONS: THE INFLUENCE OF JURY-DEFENDANT ATTITUDE SIMILARITY-DISSIMILARITY

Subjects were exposed to a standard videotape account of a crime of negligent automobile homicide. With the criminal evidence held constant, the similarity of the defendant's attitudes to those of simulated jury members was varied. Subjects exposed to a defendant with attitudes dissimilar to their own rated the defendant as more guilty, sentenced him to a greater number of years of imprisonment, recommended lengthier terms of imprisonment prior to parole eligibility, and evaluated him less positively on measures of attraction and other evaluative dimensions, than did subjects exposed to a defendant with attitudes similar to their own. The results are discussed with respect to evaluative response processes and judicial impartiality.

The defendant's dilemma: effects of jurors' attitudes and authoritarianism on judicial decisions.

Tested the hypotheses that (a) attitude similarity between defendant and juror is positively related to judicial decisions favoring the defendant, and (b) juror authoritarianism is negatively related to judicial decisions favoring the defendant. In a simulated jury situation, 139 undergraduates resp