Social Psychology & Law
Social Psychology and the Law
 Psychology
in the Courtroom
Pre-trial
Courtroom Drama
Jury
Deliberation
Post-conviction
Pre Trial: Jury Selection



In US, you have right to an “impartial” jury
Is that right upheld?
Jury selection is 3-step process
1.) Master list of eligible jurors
2.) Random sample taken from master list – these
people are called for jury duty
3.) Voir dire – pretrial interview by judge and lawyers, to
omit “biased” jurors
Jury Selection: Voir dire




Voir dire: Does it work?
Peremptory challenges – lawyers can reject certain # of
jurors who seem unbiased without reasons
Trial lawyers act as intuitive psychologists
For example, the stereotypes are that:



Athletes are unsympathetic to fragile or injured victims
Engineers are unemotional
Men with beards resist authority
Jury Selection: Voir dire



Are these stereotypes accurate? Not really:
For example, contrary to lawyer’s beliefs, people are
harsher toward same-race defendants when evidence is
strong (Kerr et al., 1995)
In general, lawyers are not good at predicting jury voting
by intuition (Olczak et al., 1991) or question-asking (Kerr
et al., 1991)
“Scientific” Jury Selection


Hiring professional jury consultants to identify
ideal jurors
Use survey methods that yield correlations
between demographics and trial-relevant
attitudes
 E.g,
In OJ Simpson trial, black women were
identified as most sympathetic to OJ

Lawyers than ask potential jurors targeted
personal questions to identify the “right” jurors
Jury Selection: Death Qualification

Used in


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
capital cases
Jury prescribes sentencing
Judge can exclude all potential jurors who say they are
against the death penalty.
Does this tip the balance toward the death penalty?
Yes! Jurors who are not opposed to the death penalty:



More likely to vote guilty in murder trial (Cowan et al., 1986)
More concerned about crime, trustful of police, cynical toward
defense lawyers, etc.
The death qualification process itself conveys that the defendant
is guilty!
Jury Selection: Death Qualification



Lockhardt v McCree (1986) – Supreme Court case
questioning whether death row inmates deserved new
trial because of biases in death qualification
APA presented exhaustive review of evidence
Supreme Court dismissed the evidence, ruling that death
qualification does not bias juries.
Nonevidentiary Influences:
Pretrial Publicity


Does exposure to pretrial news stories corrupt
prospective jurors?
Why is pretrial publicity potentially dangerous?
Contaminating Effects of Pretrial Publicity
From N.I. Kerr, G.P. Kramer, J.S. Carroll and J.J. Alfinin, (1982), "On the Effectiveness of Voir Dire in Criminal
Cases with Prejudicial Pretrial Publicity: An Empirical Study," American University Law Review, 40, pp. 665701. Reprinted with permission.
Nonevidentiary Influences:
Inadmissible Testimony

Why do people not always follow a judge’s order to
disregard inadmissible evidence?
 Added instruction draws attention
 Judge’s instruction to disregard may arouse
reactance.
 Hard to ignore information that seems relevant to the
case.
Courtroom Drama
Do Innocent Defendants Ever Confess?

Central Park Jogger Rape
Matias Reyes
The Risk of False Confessions
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

May confess merely to escape a bad situation.
Internalization can lead innocent suspects to believe
they might be guilty of the crime.
Factors that increase the risk:
 Vulnerability
 Suspect who lacks clear memory of the event in
question
 False incriminating evidence
 Presentation of false evidence
False Confessions
(Kassin & Kiechel)
 Ps worked on a computer task.
 Told:

Vulnerability manipulation
 Task

“DO NOT hit alt key bc computer will crash!”
(½ very slow-paced vs. ½ very fast-pace)
Incriminating evidence
 Evidence
offered by confederate (½ yes vs. ½ no)
Dependent variables:
 % who signed a confession
 % who admitted guilt privately
False Confessions
% who confessed
(Kassin & Kiechel)
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Slow task
Fast task
No evidence
(False) evidence
False Confessions
% who admitted guilt privately
(Kassin & Kiechel)
70
60
50
40
Slow task
Fast task
30
20
10
0
No evidence
(False) evidence
Okay, but How Much
Is a Confession Worth?
(Kassin & Sukel)
Mock jurors read a murder trial
 1/3
no confession in trial
 1/3 low-pressure confession in trial
 1/3 high-pressure confession in trial
Dependent variable:
%
of participants convicting the defendant
Okay, but How Much
Is a Confession Worth?
(Kassin & Sukel)
% of participants convicting
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
No confession
Low pressure
High pressure
Okay, but How Much
Is a Confession Worth?
(Kassin & Sukel)
% of participants convicting
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
No confession
Answer: a lot!!!
Low pressure
High pressure
Why? An Attributional Dilemma

Juries are powerfully influenced by evidence of a
confession, even if the confession was coerced.
 FAE revisited.

A jury’s reaction can be influenced by how confession
evidence is presented.
Perceptual Salience
Actor A
Actor B
Whichever actor they faced was the one the observers judged to be the
more dominant member of the dyad
Confessions & Perceptual Salience
(Lassister & colleagues)

Taped mock confessions from 3 different angles
 1/3
only suspect was visible
 1/3 only interrogator was visible
 1/3 both were visible

Ps who only saw suspects saw the situation as
less coercive than did others
EYEWITNESSES
Three chances to for errors
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Actual
Events
Acquisition:
Info the person
perceives
Storage:
Info the person
stores in memory
Retrieval:
Info the person
retrieves at a later time
Eyewitness Testimony:
Acquisition


Refers to the witness’s perceptions at the time of the
event in question.
Factors influencing acquisition:
 One’s emotional state
 Weapon-focus effect
 Cross-race identification bias
Eyewitnesses: Acquisition

Accuracy of Eyewitness Identification
 Phase

1
Staged a theft; Ps (“eyewitnesses”) pick out “thief” from
photos
Poor viewing condition – “thief” wore cap; present for 12 seconds
 Moderate viewing condition -- “thief” revealed more of his face;
present for 12 seconds
 Good viewing condition -- “thief” did not wear cap; present for 20
seconds

 Phase
2
Eyewitnesses were questioned & session videotaped
 New Ps (“jurors”) watched videotaped session
 Jurors rated extent to which they believed
the witness correctly identified the thief

Accuracy of Eyewitness Identification
100
Jurors who
thought
witness made
correct
identification
Percentage
80
60
Witnesses
who correctly
identified
thief
40
20
Poor
Moderate
Viewing Conditions
Good
Eyewitness Testimony: Storage



Refers to getting the information into memory to avoid
forgetting.
Memory for faces and events tends to decline over time.
But, not all memories fade over time.
 However, the “purity” of the memory can be
influenced by postevent information.
Eyewitness Testimony:
Storage (cont.)


Misinformation Effect: The tendency for false postevent
information to become integrated into people’s memory
of an event.
If adults can be misled by postevent information, what
about children?
 Repetition, misinformation, and leading questions can
bias a child’s report, particularly for preschoolers.
Eyewitness: Storage Stage
(Loftus & Palmer)
About how fast were
the cars going when
they ____ each other?
“smashed”
“hit”
“contacted”
40.8 mph
34.0 mph
30.8 mph
Eyewitness: Storage Stage
(Loftus & Palmer)
About how fast were
the cars going when
they ____ each other?
“smashed”
“hit”
“contacted”
40.8 mph
34.0 mph
30.8 mph
32% Misremembered Broken Glass in “Smashed” Condition
Eyewitness Testimony: Retrieval


Refers to pulling the information out of storage when
needed.
Factors affecting identification performance:
 Lineup construction
 Lineup instructions to the witness
 Format of the lineup
 Familiarity-induced biases
Eyewitness: Retrieval Stage
Lineups (Malpass & Devine)
 Ps saw a staged act of vandalism, after which
they attended a lineup
 Instructions received:
½ biased (led to believe culprit was present)
 ½ unbiased (may or may not be present)

 Culprit

(½ was present vs. ½ was absent)
Dependent variable:
%
of false identifications
Lineup Identifications
(Malpass & Devine)
% of false identifications
80
70
60
50
Unbiased
Biased
40
30
20
10
0
Culprit present
Culprit absent
Child Eyewitnesses
(Leichtman & Ceci)
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Pre-school kids told story about clumsy man, Sam Stone, who
broke things
Month later, man visited class for a day
Next day, teacher points out ripped book and soiled teddy bear
Conditions:
 Control or
 Asked suggestive questions
DVs and results:
 72% falsely identified perpetrator
 45% said they saw him do it
Real world: Wee Care Nursery School in NJ (1988)
How lineups should be conducted
4-8 innocent “foils”
 Nothing should make accused person
stand out or look different – it greatly
increases chance s/he will be selected
 One at a time (“show-up”)

Jury Deliberation: Leadership in the
Jury Room

A person is more likely to be chosen as
foreperson if the person:
 Is
of higher occupational status or has prior
jury experience.
 Is a male.
 Is the first person who speaks.
 Is sitting at the head of a rectangular table.

Forepersons act more as the jury’s
moderator rather than its leader.
Jury Deliberation:
A Leniency Bias in the Jury
Initial Votes
6-0 (guilty-not)
5-1
4-2
3-3
2-4
1-5
0-6
Final Jury Verdicts (%)
Conviction
Acquittal
100
0
78
7
44
26
9
51
4
79
0
93
0
100
Hung
0
16
30
40
17
7
0
Summary

We can understand a lot about what goes on in
the courtroom by studying the psychology of
the major courtroom actors.

The evidence from psychological research can
be (and sometimes is) used to critique &
improve aspects of the legal system.