Age and lineup type differences in the own-race bias

The own-race bias (ORB) suggests that recognition for faces of one's own race is superior to recognition of other-race faces. A popular explanation for the ORB is amount of interracial contact, which may have cohort effects for older and younger adults. We compared White younger and older adults on the ORB utilizing a hybrid facial recognition and full diagnostic lineup (i.e., simultaneous and sequential target absent and target present lineups) paradigm. Both younger and older adults demonstrated an ORB. Signal detection estimates suggest younger adults compared to older adults have better discrimination accuracy for own-race over other-race faces. Interracial contact did not explain recognition for younger adults, but was related to a shift in response criterion for older adults.     

All Anchors Are Not Created Equal: The Effects of Per Diem versus Lump Sum Requests on Pain and Suffering Awards

This experiment examined whether different quantifications of the same damage award request (175,000 lump sum,175,000 lump sum, 10/hour, 240/day,240/day, 7300/month for 2 years) influenced pain and suffering awards compared to no damage award request. Jury-eligible community members (N = 180) read a simulated personal injury case in which defendant liability already had been determined. Awards were: (1) larger for the 10/hour and10/hour and 175,000 conditions than the 7300/month and control conditions and (2) more variable for the7300/month and control conditions and (2) more variable for the 10/hour condition than the $7300/month and control conditions. No differences emerged on ratings of the parties, their attorneys, or the difficulty of picking a compensation figure. We discuss the theoretical implications of our data for the anchoring and adjustment literature and the practical implications for legal professionals.     

The Use of Religion in Death Penalty Sentencing Trials

Both prosecutors and defense attorneys have presented religious appeals and testimony about a defendant's religious activities in order to influence capital jurors' sentencing. Courts that have objected to this use of religion fear that religion will improperly influence jurors' decisions and interfere with their ability to weigh aggravators and mitigators. This study investigated the effects of both prosecution and defense appeals. Prosecution appeals did not affect verdict decisions; however, use of religion by the defense affected both verdicts and the weighing of aggravators and mitigators. These results could be due to differences in perceived sincerity and remorse that are conveyed in the various appeals.     

The impact of different types of expert scientific testimony on mock jurors’ liability verdicts

Participants in two experiments acted as jurors for a personal-injury case containing different types of expert testimony. In both experiments, the defendant was more likely to obtain a verdict in his favor when his expert presented anecdotal case histories than when the expert presented experimental data. Participants’ liability judgments were correlated with their perceptions of the experts’ credibility (experiments 1 and 2) and were moderated somewhat by their need for cognition and preference for numerical information (experiment 2). The results are discussed in terms of reasoning heuristics such as the base-rate fallacy.     

Beliefs about secondary confession evidence: a survey of laypeople and defense attorneys

We surveyed students, community members, and defense attorneys regarding beliefs about secondary confession evidence (i.e. when a third party tells authorities that a person has confessed to him or her) from jailhouse informants and other sources. Results indicated that laypeople perceive secondary confessions as less credible than other types of evidence (e.g. forensics, DNA, eyewitness testimony), and they are knowledgeable about factors that may influence the veracity of secondary confessions, such as incentives or previous testimony. However, they underestimated or were uncertain about how persuasive secondary confessions would be to themselves or other jurors. Compared to laypeople, defense attorneys were more sensitive about issues affecting the reliability of secondary confessions.     

Pretrial Publicity and Civil Cases: A Two-Way Street?

Published pretrial publicity (PTP) research has been conducted almost exclusively with criminal cases and has focused on PTP that is detrimental to the defense. The current research examined the effects of PTP in a civil case to determine if PTP can have a biasing effect against either the defendant or the plaintiff in civil litigation. In Experiment 1, participants exposed to PTP biased against the defendant were more likely to reach a liable verdict than participants who read a control article or PTP biased against the plaintiff. Experiment 2 demonstrated that a judicial admonition did not reduce the biasing effect of PTP about a civil defendant. However, participants given the admonition both before and after the trial evidence viewed the defendant as less culpable than participants given the admonition after the trial only or not at all. The implications for the legal system are discussed.     

The Effects of Limiting Punitive Damage Awards

In response to concerns that jury awards in tort cases are excessive and unpredictable, nearly every state legislature has enacted some version of tort reform that is intended to curb extravagant damage awards. One of the most important and controversial reforms involves capping (or limiting) the maximum punitive damage award. We conducted a jury analogue study to assess the impact of this reform. In particular, we examined the possibility that capping punitive awards would cause jurors to inflate their compensatory awards to satisfy their desires to punish the defendant, particularly in situations where the defendant's conduct was highly reprehensible. Relative to a condition in which punitive damages were unlimited, caps on punitive damages did not result in inflation of compensatory awards. However, jurors who had no option to award punitive damages assessed compensatory damages at a significantly higher level than did jurors who had the opportunity to do so. We discuss the policy implications of these findings.     

How mock jurors’ cognitive processing and defendants’ immigrant status and ethnicity relate to decisions in capital trials

Journal of Experimental Criminology - This study examined how defendants’ immigrant status and ethnicity interact with evidence strength and mock jurors’ cognitive processing traits to...