Decision Making of Juries - Evaluation

Evaluation of Social Influence
1. Majority influence
  1. Varied opinions
    1. Hinsz and Davis (1984) found the more varied the opinions, the greater the shift in opinion
  2. Deeper discussions
    1. 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
  3. Greater confidence
    1. Kerr (1987) claimed knowing more people are on your side allows majority members to be more argumentative, so their views are more compelling
  4. Dangers of discussion
    1. Myers and Kaplan (1976) found after discussing low-guilt cases the juries recommended a more lenient punishment and the high-guilt cases were more harsh
2. Minority influence
  1. An attribution effect
    1. 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
  2. Minority size
    1. Tindale (1990) - larger minorities are more effective than lone dissenters
    2. Wood (1994) - increasing numbers have a greater effect
      1. increasing numbers mean that their views cannot be easily dismissed
Evaluation of Characteristics of the Defendant
1. Ethnicity
  1. Contradictory evidence
    1. Mazzella and Feingold (1994) found no overall effect of ethnicity on mock jury decisions
      1. however, punishment was affected by ethnic group
  2. The effect of the crime
    1. effect of ethnic group varies with the crime
      1. Gordon (1988) found that longer sentences were given to black than to white defendants convicted of burglary, but the reverse was true for fraud
  3. Attributional bias
    1. Johnson (2002) manipulated the ethnic group of the defendant with a group of all white PP's
      1. found PP's made more situational attributions about the white defendant and suggested more lenient punishments than for the black defendants, which could explain ethnic differences
2. Physical attractivenss
  1. The effect of the crime
    1. effect of physical attractiveness also varies with crime
      1. Sigall and Ostrove (1975) found unattractive defendants were given longer sentences for burglary but the reverse was true for fraud
        supporting the idea that the attractiveness effect ceases to operate if we believe that good looks have been used for criminal gain
  2. Gender bias
    1. Abwender and Hough (2001) found female jurors treated attractive defendants significantly more leniently than unattractive ones, but the reverse was true for male jurors
      1. however, such evidence can be criticised because in court the judgement of guilt or innocence is absolute, so the situation was not entirely realistic

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