Decision Making of Juries

Social influence
1. Majority Influence
  1. Asch (1955) showed how a single PP in a group would conform to the majority
  2. Hastie (1983) found that a jury's final verdict reflected the view held by the majority of jurors
    1. 86% if the final decision was innocent, 90% if it was guilty
  3. normative influences
    1. wanting to be accepted by the group
  4. informational influences
    1. being affected by believing that others know better
  5. Smith and Mackie (1995) suggested several reasons why the majority is so influential
    1. Varied opinions
      1. being the majority, they can express their opinion in a variety of ways
      2. however, Hinsz and Davis (1984) found the more varied the opinions, the greater the shift in opinion
    2. Deeper discussions
      1. shared discussions can be longer with more people
      2. 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
    3. Greater confidence
      1. knowing most people share the same views, allows members to be more convincing and are more likely to convert others
      2. Kerr (1987) claimed knowing more people are on your side allows majority members to be more argumentative, so their views are more compelling
2. Minority Influence
  1. Nemeth (1977) says minority makes the majority question their own opinion
    1. 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. Moscovici (1969) demonstrated the power of the minority
    1. 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
      1. Moscovici suggests that individuals in juries can change the majority view when they have a long deliberation period, but they need to be consistent
  3. however, Tindale (1990) - for the minority to have an effect, they must be in large groups
Characteristics of the defendant
1. Juror's beliefs about the defendant will affect their decision making
  1. Dixon (2002) asked PP's to judge guilt from a recorded exchange between a suspect and policemen
    1. standard british accent = rarely identified as guilty
    2. Birmingham accent = significantly more likey to be guilty
2. Ethnicity
  1. Stereotypes based on ethnicity affect jurors' decision making
    1. Duncan (1976) varied ethnic group of the perpetrator and victim in a tape of a potential violent situation
      1. PP's judged shove as more violent when done by a black individual
    2. 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,
      1. especially when victim was white
      2. when asked to justify verdict, the effect of ethnicity disappeared
        suggests that differences were due to stereotyping
    3. however, Mazzella and Feingold (1994) found no overall effect of ethnicity on mock jury decisions
  2. Judgements of ethnic minorities are similarly biased in real cases
    1. Baldwin and McConville (1979) found that black defendants were more likely to be wrongly convicted
      1. even if members of the jury were black
      2. however, Gordon (1988) found that longer sentences were given to white people if the crime was fraud
3. Physical Attractiveness
  1. In court we tend to link physical attractiveness with positive characteristics
    1. Saladin (1988) showed PP's photos of men and asked them to judge how capable the men were at committing a crime
      1. found that attractive men were considered less likely to commit a crime than the unattractive ones
    2. it's the same with sentencing
      1. DeSantis and Kayson (1997) found that mock jurors gave unattractive defendants harsher sentences
    3. however if attractive individuals appear to be abusing their good looks then the advantage is lost
      1. Sigall & Ostrove (1975) found unattractive defendants were given longer sentences for burglary but the reverse was true for fraud
  2. Downs and Lyons demonstrated a negative correlation between defendant attractiveness and fines/ bail payments
    1. however, attractiveness seems to be irrelevant when imposing fines / setting bail payments (McKelvie and Coley, 1993)

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