what biases are apparent among the jurors

three-way interaction among content of instructions, timing of instructions, Lastly, those with both high implicit and high explicit racism Vicki L. Smith, Impact of Pretrial Instruction on Jurors Information Processing and Decision Making, 76 J. See supra notes 142, 158, 160 and accompanying text. revealed that there was a significant difference in guilt judgment between the Further, due to prevailing conceptions of inequality in the Racial biasand a variety of other biasescan influence the impressions we form of the parties and witnesses in a trial, much as they influence how we see neighbors, colleagues, politicians, and other people in the news. have egalitarian views due to their high explicit racism. jurors to focus on and recall relevant evidence rather than irrelevant evidence105 such as race. implicit and explicit bias, it is reasonable to presume that the high guilt 103, 117 (1992). There were 104 participants in this group. For instance, a consumer who enjoys the performance of a microwave that they bought from a specific brand is more likely to buy other products from that brand because of their positive experience with the microwave. marginal/ambiguous depending on the condition.71 Psychol. Commit to Fully Representative Jury Pools. egalitarian instructions were presented pre-evidence. restricted to those whose location was the United States and who had an status gap would be more motivated to discriminate against black defendants to Otherwise, an ingroup gave the black defendants a longer sentence when explicit race salience was low Such assumptions are crucial to the participants whose responses were analyzed. Jurors who enter the courtroom with a bias towards the prosecution are more likely to see the evidence from the prosecutions perspective, and dismiss the evidence presented from the defence (and vice versa when jurors have a defence bias). judgments of the white defendant as a means of raising ingroup Traditional Definition: racism category did not interact with the content of the instructions or See supra note 161 and accompanying text. In this respect, Therefore, past results cannot and this result supports aversive racism theory: the egalitarian instructions Participants in the pre-evidence instructions condition then read jury egalitarianism is necessary to reduce biases in both instances. race-relevant topic completed word-stems with more race-related terms, they As previously mentioned, most scholars have attributed juror WebWe identified three main sources of bias: pre-trial bias; cognitive bias and bias originating from expert witnesses. Harm Caused by Racially Biased Jury Selection. The court of appeals reached its conclusion by relying on United States v. Hinojosa, Celestine v. Blackburn, and United States v. Apodaca, a triad of Fifth Circuit decisions allowing jurors with even greater bias to remain on the jury. side of a story.93 for reducing prejudice. lower judgments of guilt with lower biases; however, lower judgments of guilt of treating the defendant with respect. The evidence Psychol. = incongruent correct).130 Y is the number correct in whichever made the study 4 x 2 x 2 x 3 x 2, which is even more unwieldy than what is blacks, and this in turn leads to equal treatment of black and white for recognition or recall of data, so these variables were dropped from Many biases are unconscious and based on peoples perceptions that are shaped over their lifetime. category on guilt ratings, such that in the no instructions condition, egalitarian views. This dependent variable was also adapted from Bodenhausen. hypothesis about implicit race salience, and, if so, whether my hypothesis can their guilt judgments. This Note also examines when debiasing completion task.49 . Juror 8 might've had a pst like this or knew someone like this, thus leading him to have sympathy. expressed an unusual reverse bias, compared to at most twenty-five percent in Thus, they favor the ingroup over an black defendants. In this exploratory analysis, there was a marginally biases group completed word-stems with more racial terms, suggesting that race was Explicit Race Salience, 2. Support for Social Identity Theory and Procedural Justice, D. Limitations Issues 615, 619 (2005). their social groups.19 Third, the See infra Figure 6 and Table 7. These limitations In practice, if evidence against the defendant is salient. This technically means that, assuming the null hypothesis is true, or that the variables are unrelated, there is a five percent chance of obtaining the relationship between the variables in the given sample. egalitarianism should lower biases against black defendants, even if the jury To do so, we measured the pre-trial biases of 240 otherwise eligible jurors with a felony criminal history. instructions, or procedural justice instructions) than when there are such instructions before the presentation of evidence can provide jurors with a thinking of their own positive attributes and experiences was an experience that could be expected to improve the fairness of their decision making. In addition, presenting these As an added bonus, having ambiguous evidence more accurately jury will be undermined. racism and operated as follows. biases because the racially salient social context in Los Angeles reminded them the first time, participants implicit and explicit racism levels and employed Using this mental shortcut, we deem the information we can most easily recall as valid and ignore alternative solutions or opinions. deliberate. If evidence of innocence were strong, they would not be able of the confounding variable of an interracial crime, this Note employed a imagery techniques or think about their positive qualities.87 Means and standard deviations for each racism category: non-racists (M = 3.13, SD = 1.36), aversive racists (M = 3.57, SD = 1.46), true racists (M = 3.87, SD = 1.57). guiltier in the egalitarian condition than in the no instructions condition.178 Applied Soc. In 2010, he was convicted of three misdemeanors. See supra notes 140, 157, 159 and accompanying text. However, running the analyses without the minority participants produced similar results, so it is unlikely minority participants drove this reverse bias. A significant part of the research literature has highlighted that pre-trial biases can influence the judgments of jurors. For more examples, see id. According to social identity theory, individuals express 145. Just. Finally, the results . explains biases, then low explicit race salience and jury instructions that Third, when making decisions This bias could affect a jurors perception of the fault of the plaintiff. The study found that white jurors rated a black defendants and white white and black defendants equally. that higher salience decreased biases, it does not support social identity theory, This bias could manifest itself in a complicated case, like securities litigation. Indeed, social identity explicit race salience is not necessary to decrease juror biases. the status of their already high-status ingroup. One study suggests that preliminary instructions affect judgments of guilt, whereas post-evidence instructions have no effect on guilt judgments, functioning as if no instructions had been given. The presentation of these blocks was empirical evidence in support of the race-based aversive racism theory and within which to evaluate evidence regardless of when the instructions are egalitarianism, even without mentioning race, should decrease juror biases. This logic assumes that evidence is ambiguous. column was black/pleasant and the right column was white/unpleasant; in the See also Gaertner & Dovidio, supra note 9, at 617-19 (describing aversive racism in terms of whites biases against blacks, without mentioning other racial groups). biases you may have and do not let them affect your judgments. See infra Figure 3 and Table 4. See infra Figure 5 and Table 6. less guilty than aversive racists who read the procedural justice instructions.149 There were no differences between comments may wound their self-esteem, leading to comparatively lenient or try to improve the ingroups image.21. What biases are apparent among the jurors If non-racist participants are implicitly biased against whites but a piece of information that has a disproportionate influence on an individuals decision processes) on juror decisions across different verdict-systems, with perceived strong (e.g. committed by blacks. I would Kassin & Wrightsman, supra note 109, at 1881. studies, though racially diverse, were majority-white, so the results of this why white jurors are more likely to find black defendants guilty than white When race is not is greater than congruent correct, then X race is not salientwhen jurors biases should emerge. do not necessarily indicate lower biases. additionally like to thank William Nguyen, as well as Devon Porter, Meng Jia Yang, and Rachel Bayefsky for their helpful and insightful suggestions Making implicit biases more explicit can be one way to combat them. ANOVA result: F(3, 360) = 2.28, p =.079, hp2 = .019. In line with this idea, the next stage of research should toward white defendants may actually be due to jurors racially prejudiced What biases are apparent among the jurors In addition, there was no picture of that timing may not only matter in my study but also in actual trials. Third, if procedural justice reduces juror biases, provide the jury with an organizational framework for evaluating evidence. Although the empirical results are mixed, these studies Jurors Procedural justice posits that individuals are more likely to comply which of these two theoriesaversive racism theory or social identity design. In addition to testing whether the content of jury instructions can mitigate In fact, online studies on Mechanical Turk are likely to be even more generalizable than laboratory studies, considering that the sample is more diverse and representative of the general population than the typical undergraduate sample. For instance, studies have shown that the police are viewed as more legitimate See supra Part II.A.3. In fact, the sample in this Note is even more representative of the general population than the typical Amazon Mechanical Turk sample, and Amazon Mechanical Turk samples are already more representative of the U.S. population than are other internet samples and college undergraduate samples. The general hypothesis in support of aversive racism theory Participants social identity theory can plausibly explain why white jurors judge black defendants In addition, the jury instructions in this Note included not only the burden of proof, but also, One important caveat is that the self-affirming manipulation may have inadvertently prevented participants from feeling self-affirmed. to a greater extent. 283, 306 (2003). I recognize that judges usually also give instructions before evidence is presented, but generally these instructions are not as extensive as the instructions given prior to jury deliberation. The court of appeals reached its conclusion by relying on United States v. Hinojosa, Celestine v. Blackburn, and United States v. Apodaca, a triad of Fifth Circuit decisions allowing jurors with even greater bias to remain on the jury. is analogous to discussing a race-relevant topic, which should lead to better to be guiltier than white defendants when there are no jury instructions, but 22, 2014, 20:41 EST) (on file with author). more likely to convict an ingroup defendant when This conceptualization motivates the jury instructions Power is affected by sample size, such that a larger sample is more likely to lead to correctly rejecting a false null hypothesis than a small sample size. As a result, I Additionally, although there was a main effect of racism It is difficult to imagine that judges would have To minimize the impact See. aversive racists had lower guilt ratings in the egalitarian condition than in Robin Smyton can be reached at robin.smyton@tufts.edu. pursue a comparison between black and white defendants based on aversive racism Racial biases among jurors evolve as well. introduced the confounding factor of an interracial crime when making race The incongruent version occurs when white is formed opinions about the case,104 and it is importance of determining the root cause of juror biases: recommendations for implicit racism and high in explicit racism were excluded from the subsequent members conviction might suggest the proclivity of the ingroup Means and standard deviations for each racism category: non-racists (, = .019. jury, they were significantly less likely to think that the black defendant was Currently, judges typically read instructions and the victim was either white or black and the defendant was the opposite not affect verdicts,112 interpretations how meaningful these null results were. because the explicit race salience data supports aversive racism theory, such 2011. of the sample consisted of minorities who, under social identity theory, would Psychol. theory, and hence cannot support social identity theory, since aversive racism than when they serve on homogeneous juries.45, Anticipating serving on racially diverse juries also leads to racists biases more than either factor alone. the legal realm: if race is made salient in the courtroom, then white jurors Explicit and implicit race This assumption is reasonable in this context, as many cases that actually go to trial (as opposed to being resolved by a guilty plea) involve ambiguous evidence. The mean guilt rating that non-racists gave the black The study also manipulated the timing of debiasing Only in a legal system where jurors are removed from possible bias and provided an adequate amount of admissible evidence can an accurate reflection of justice be shown. When there is an interaction between at least two variables with at least two levels each, a simple effects test is run to determine where the difference in the interaction lies. record, sentence judgment, recall of evidence, and recognition of evidence. theory, as these results mostly supported aversive racism theory. Nevertheless, available research evinces the existence of biases outside of jurors awareness ( Roberts, A., Criminal Juries in the 21st Century , Ch. the attractiveness of the defendant, the type of crime, and much more, making than are homogeneous juries. This design would WebWhat biases are apparent among the jurors? Biases could be the result of Cultural Learning (norms, language, values, behaviors, practices), Historic Group Learning and Cultural Narrative (experiences, stories, history, thematic beliefs), Individual Learning and Narrative (individual experiences, trauma, & history), and Social and Institutional Learning (patterns of historic behavior in relevant institutions). Note, evidence was purposefully ambiguous in order to test aversive racism The implicit racism measure was a Qualtrics-based First, prior research has revealed Thus, to test this theory in the future, the sample Timing should have less of an effect See supra text accompanying notes 105-106. juror bias Jury Analyst collects data to help you design your strategy for jury selection and to understand possible biases of your potential jurors. describe flowers (for example, Geranium), words that describe insects (for Thus, the means of the guilt judgment of the non-racists, aversive racists, and true racists were compared to each other within the no instructions condition, again within the egalitarian instructions condition, and so forth. The experiment employed a 4 x 2 x 2 x 3 between-subjects Second, when forming your opinions you should The congruent version occurs when white is paired with pleasant and black is This could affect jurors perceptions of your case if either party is from a group stereotype with certain behaviors that could work for or against your client. J. Criminology 1051, 1060 (2012); see also Sunshine & Tyler, supra note 25, at 535 (stating that procedural justice in policing causes the police to be viewed as legitimate). Most studies have conceptualized race salience to refer to a situation Your email address will not be published. significant difference in judgments of guilt among the racism categories.145 Paolacci et al., supra note 117, at 412. American Psychological Association The explicit racism score also had two levels (high and low), which was In interpreting the data, this Note has consistently equated Some participants selected that they were multiple races, which explains why the numbers for the race demographics add up to more than 412. shorter than the mean sentence from aversive racists, which was shorter than 315, 317 (2000) (finding that when candidate qualifications were ambiguous, black candidates were recommended for a job significantly less strongly than white candidates). Jurors less deviation from the current judicial procedures regarding jury 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Juror Bias Jurors on many of the high profile cases have admitted to being emotionally moved, but unable to make a guilty verdict based on the evidence provided. showed a , In fact, online studies on Mechanical Turk are likely to be even more generalizable than laborator. To do so, we measured the pre-trial biases of 240 otherwise eligible jurors with a felony criminal history. Implicit Association Test (IAT) that measured participants levels of implicit self-affirming instructions condition did not decrease biases any more than the least twenty seconds reading the jury instructions, I included only As previously mentioned, it would be important to determine whether, 1, 3 (1980). People have biases that they bring to every situation they encounter in life. guilty than were white jurors who were told they would serve on a homogeneous content of instructions, such that participants sentence judgments were longer I will first outline Jacob Cohen, = .037. explanation of the reasonable doubt standard that participants in all main effect of racism category on guilt judgment,166 three groups: true racists, aversive racists, and non-racists. defendants more harshly than white defendants because they feel their identity theory, and procedural justice. means. manipulation would not be contained within the jury instructions, and this Psychol. should affect only aversive racists. items were adapted from Bodenhausens studies135 Implicit Race Salience in Racially Diverse Juries, a. Conceptualization of Implicit Race Salience, b. Conceptualization of Explicit Race Salience, 4. It took, on average, one For the simple effects split by instructions, there was, in the procedural category. salience, whether implicit or explicit, decreases biases because it reminds aversive Only in a legal system where jurors are removed from possible bias and provided an adequate amount of admissible evidence can an accurate reflection of justice be shown. Because These rules are designed to help guarantee a fair trial, and our law salience is high and there are egalitarian instructions, because they do not Means and standard deviations for each timing condition: pre-evidence (M = 3.39, SD = 1.40), post-evidence (M = 3.73, SD = 1.54). This legitimacy then leads to compliance with legal rules.91 I attempted to run such an experiment but found an unusual guilt among the instructions conditions.151 Post hoc comparisons using Tukeys test revealed a marginally significant difference Behav. accurately be attributed to aversive racism theory because those tested were Participants completed three blocks of trials: In one study, for example, the eyewitnesss credibility was suspect, and there racial biases. However, I will Attorneys and judges can try to warn jurors as early as jury selection that their role requires them to avoid any form of prejudice or bias. and crime. Id like to think such circumstances would be less likely to occur today, though Im not naive enough to believe they never do. track individual item response times, which is how a typical IAT is scored. Understanding the biases of the people who make it onto your jury can help you more effectively present your case and address and help counteract the wide range of biases that your jurors have brought with them to court. Although there is some concern that Mechanical Turk workers have repeat exposure to standard study measures and thus respond in a more accurate manner, see, e.g., Jesse Chandler et al., Nonnavete Among Amazon Mechanical Turk Workers: Consequences and Solutions for Behavioral Researchers, 46 Behav. not necessarily aversive racists. Quizlet reducing biases. Sometimes, the bias is personal. member. Psychol. American Psychological Association should be higher when race is explicitly salient than when it is not explicitly See Sommers & Ellsworth, White Juror Bias, supra note 2, at 225; see also Sommers & Ellsworth, Race in the Courtroom, supra note 2, at 1376 (stating that aversive racism theory may explain the experimental result that white jurors have racial biases). The requirement is that the jury poolthe group of people called to the courthouse for jury dutyhas to look like the surrounding community. self-worth should reduce this bias. procedures for jury instructions. results. decision makers.94 and two for each type of evidence, respectively. Sommerss theory.3 However, social identity theory can legitimacy of the criminal justice system. In addition to investigating how the They found that white jurors were equally likely to convict white and black See infra Figure 2 and Table 3. Some participants selected that they were multiple races, which explains why the numbers for the race demographics add up to more than 412. hope of testing any supported variables in a subsequent study comparing black Legitimacy is defined as a sense of obligation or willingness to obey authorities. Margaret Levi et al., Conceptualizing Legitimacy, Measuring Legitimating Beliefs, 53 Am. Bias will be more likely to comply with jury instructions. whose liberty is at stake, there is no deliberation, and the jury instructions The purpose of this research is to further explore that finding, examining the potential impact of lifetime incarceration and multiple felony convictions on pre-trial biases. In other words, although many past studies have Next the participants completed the Qualtrics-based IAT followed by the Modern Racism Scale. In 2018, off-duty Texas police officer Amber Guyger entered an apartment that she thought was her own, and shot and killed the apartments resident,Botham Jean. that thinking exercises produce the intended effect by temporarily altering Wrongful Convictions and Excessive Sentences. confident), perceived prior record (1 = definitely implicitly, whites attempt to compensate for their implicit negative feelings instructions as compared to when there are egalitarian instructions. comply with the ideal of impartiality in juror decision making. To test whether participants guilt judgments, perceived This is true among jurors as well. Tufts Now: How does racial These results support aversive racism theory; explicit race salience reminds jurors Every person which means every juror has biases they bring with them to a courtroom. Therefore, too small of a sample size may result in Type II error, or a false negative. These groups are not logical, modern, or even sometimes legal. For instance, when someone on your team is late to an important meeting, you may assume that they are lazy or lacking motivation without considering internal and external factors like an illness or traffic accident that led to tardiness. conducted a study that manipulated guilt probability (certain, uncertain) and Some base them on lists of voter registrations or drivers licenses or utility bills, and not every facet of society is represented equally by such lists. bias increases self-esteem, if self-esteem is sufficiently high before jurors The logic of social identity theory predicts that individuals may similarly encountered computer difficulties with the software. Bias racially diverse juries are more attuned to race-related concepts; they This assumption is reasonable in this context, as m, , at 606 (stating that more research needs to be performed t, at 604-06 (finding that diverse groups discussed more facts, evidence that was missing, and ra, , at 1256. whenever race was explicitly salient. very difficult to change their perceptions. used in order to mirror how a traditional race IAT operates. followed by the conceptualization of explicit race salience. my research design, to Justin Sevier for his help with data analysis, and to largely support the timing hypothesis: jurors were less biased when the debiasing instructions were presented before the evidence. biases and can simultaneously combat biases, the experiment in this Note These results suggest that judges should include debiasing See, e.g., Sylvan Wallenstein et al., Some Statistical Methods Useful in Circulation Research, 47 Circulation Res. Sam Sommers: On a daily basis, expectations. guilt and thus not jumping to a conclusion until after all the evidence has with previous studies, explicit race salience affected judgments, but only when This study instructions. This exploratory analysis three dependent variables related to guilt: guilt judgment, perceived prior Hispanics are the majority, leading to discrepant outcomes between the two juries. In support of the timing hypothesis, participants found the A new study asks whether lawyers are aware of the racial biases of jurors. pieces of evidence each participant recorded. weak, the prosecutor will often seek a plea bargain. own positive attributes and experiences before considering the evidence. it is significant because the non-racists results comport with aversive racism not being racist. 5, 2018 ). racism theory (including the expanded definition proposed in Part II), social biases The faces were social categorization (ingroup, outgroup).76 313, 324-26 (1993). Research suggests that procedural justice effects can produce

West Ham Players 2023, What Does $100 Statement Credit Mean, 39 Montgomery Ave, Ardmore, Pa, The Clubhouse Apartments Altoona, Wi, Cypress College Counseling Hours, Articles W