An investigation of the psychological processes involved in juror rehabilitation
Item
-
Title
-
An investigation of the psychological processes involved in juror rehabilitation
-
Identifier
-
d_2009_2013:bcb8280c2960:10569
-
identifier
-
10828
-
Creator
-
Crocker, Caroline B.,
-
Contributor
-
Margaret B. Kovera
-
Date
-
2010
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Experimental psychology | Social psychology | Juror Bias | Jury | Legal Psychology | Pretrial Publicity
-
Abstract
-
Judges often attempt to rehabilitate jurors who express an inability to be fair during voir dire. The present research examined psychological mechanisms operating during juror rehabilitation. Study One investigated whether the influence of rehabilitative questioning on juror judgments observed in previous research is attributable to informational or normative influence from the judge. I manipulated the presence of two components of rehabilitation (i.e., legal instruction and elicitation of a commitment to forgo bias) within a mock voir dire. I also varied evidence strength to assess whether rehabilitative questioning improves the quality of jurors' judgments. Jurors watched a trial and rendered a verdict. Rehabilitative instructions reduced the number of guilty verdicts for biased and unbiased participants. Rehabilitation did not increase jurors' sensitivity to evidence strength. Study Two tested the hypothesis that traditional suppression rehabilitation will lead to increased accessibility of PTP under conditions of cognitive load. I manipulated exposure to PTP and the type of rehabilitation questioning received (i.e., no rehabilitation, rehabilitation framed in terms of suppression, rehabilitation framed in terms of concentration). Efforts were taken to induce a state of cognitive busyness in all participants while they watched the trial; after the trial participants deliberated to a verdict. Exposure to PTP increased the likelihood that participants would vote guilty. In the no rehabilitation and concentration conditions, participants who read PTP perceived the defendant as more guilty than did participants who did not view PTP. However, in the suppression rehabilitation condition, participants who read PTP perceived the defendant as less guilty than did participants who did not read PTP. Rehabilitative instructions and suppression rehabilitation resulted in more lenient judgments than the no-rehabilitation control, suggesting that participants were not well calibrated to the magnitude of their bias, and when prompted to be unbiased, overcorrected in the opposite direction. Although rehabilitated jurors may be motivated to correct for bias, they appear to have difficulty estimating the degree to which biases influence their judgments. It is possible that jurors may be better able to assess the presence of and correct for a biasing influence if it is discrete rather than attitudinal in nature.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
2009_2013.csv
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
Psychology
