Decision Making of Juries

Decision Making of Juries

1. Social influence

   • Majority Influence
     • Asch (1955) showed how a single PP in a group would conform to the majority
     • Hastie (1983) found that a jury's final verdict reflected the view held by the majority of jurors
       • 86% if the final decision was innocent, 90% if it was guilty
     • normative influences
       • wanting to be accepted by the group
     • informational influences
       • being affected by believing that others know better
     • Smith and Mackie (1995) suggested several reasons why the majority is so influential
       • Varied opinions
         • being the majority, they can express their opinion in a variety of ways
         • however, Hinsz and Davis (1984) found the more varied the opinions, the greater the shift in opinion
       • Deeper discussions
         • shared discussions can be longer with more people
         • however, Stasser and Stewart (1992) found that even when instructed to discuss all the information, the PP's focussed almost entirely on the shared information and virtually excluded all the non-shared information
       • Greater confidence
         • knowing most people share the same views, allows members to be more convincing and are more likely to convert others
         • Kerr (1987) claimed knowing more people are on your side allows majority members to be more argumentative, so their views are more compelling
   • Minority Influence
     • Nemeth (1977) says minority makes the majority question their own opinion
       • Attribution effect
         • Attribution theory; their behaviour is seen to be motivated by a deep conviction since they are defending and therefore we attribute their beliefs to internal, dispositional causes rather than external ones
     • Moscovici (1969) demonstrated the power of the minority
       • In trials with 50% confederates, the conform rate of PP's was 1.25% but rose to 8.42% when the confederates answered incorrectly consistently
         • Moscovici suggests that individuals in juries can change the majority view when they have a long deliberation period, but they need to be consistent
     • however, Tindale (1990) - for the minority to have an effect, they must be in large groups

2. Characteristics of the defendant

   • Juror's beliefs about the defendant will affect their decision making
     • Dixon (2002) asked PP's to judge guilt from a recorded exchange between a suspect and policemen
       • standard british accent = rarely identified as guilty
       • Birmingham accent = significantly more likey to be guilty
   • Ethnicity
     • Stereotypes based on ethnicity affect jurors' decision making
       • Duncan (1976) varied ethnic group of the perpetrator and victim in a tape of a potential violent situation
         • PP's judged shove as more violent when done by a black individual
       • Pfeifer and Ogloff (1991) found in a mock jury case that white PP's were more likely to judge a black defendant guilty in a rape case,
         • especially when victim was white
         • when asked to justify verdict, the effect of ethnicity disappeared
           • suggests that differences were due to stereotyping
       • however, Mazzella and Feingold (1994) found no overall effect of ethnicity on mock jury decisions
     • Judgements of ethnic minorities are similarly biased in real cases
       • Baldwin and McConville (1979) found that black defendants were more likely to be wrongly convicted
         • even if members of the jury were black
         • however, Gordon (1988) found that longer sentences were given to white people if the crime was fraud
   • Physical Attractiveness
     • In court we tend to link physical attractiveness with positive characteristics
       • Saladin (1988) showed PP's photos of men and asked them to judge how capable the men were at committing a crime
         • found that attractive men were considered less likely to commit a crime than the unattractive ones
       • it's the same with sentencing
         • DeSantis and Kayson (1997) found that mock jurors gave unattractive defendants harsher sentences
       • however if attractive individuals appear to be abusing their good looks then the advantage is lost
         • Sigall & Ostrove (1975) found unattractive defendants were given longer sentences for burglary but the reverse was true for fraud
     • Downs and Lyons demonstrated a negative correlation between defendant attractiveness and fines/ bail payments
       • however, attractiveness seems to be irrelevant when imposing fines / setting bail payments (McKelvie and Coley, 1993)