Reasoned Verdicts: Oversold?

Jurors are lay fact-finders, untrained in the complexities of law and legal rules, and yet reasoned verdicts require that their reasons conform precisely to the law. This difficulty is the impetus for additional interaction with the court, as jurors must often call on legal assistance when drafting their verdicts. This necessity undermines the independence and power of jurors and opens the door for external pressures and biases to encroach on jurors’ decisions. When judges overturn jury verdicts that they consider insufficiently reasoned, judges substitute their judgments for those of the jurors. In addition, reasoned verdicts may lead to post hoc rationalizing rather than predecisional reasoning, and can be subject to poor framing and question construction. Ultimately, it seems a worthy goal to maximize jurors’ decision making while insulating such decisions from external influences. Requiring reasons of jurors may well change how jurors make decisions, but without empirical research, we cannot know if these changes are for the better. Requiring reasons of jurors may not be the panacea we desire, but it seems clear that it will undermine the independence of jurors and juries

Reasoned Verdicts: Oversold?

Jurors are lay fact-finders, untrained in the complexities of law and legal rules, and yet reasoned verdicts require that their reasons conform precisely to the law. This difficulty is the impetus for additional interaction with the court, as jurors must often call on legal assistance when drafting their verdicts. This necessity undermines the independence and power of jurors and opens the door for external pressures and biases to encroach on jurors’ decisions. When judges overturn jury verdicts that they consider insufficiently reasoned, judges substitute their judgments for those of the jurors. In addition, reasoned verdicts may lead to post hoc rationalizing rather than predecisional reasoning, and can be subject to poor framing and question construction. Ultimately, it seems a worthy goal to maximize jurors’ decision making while insulating such decisions from external influences. Requiring reasons of jurors may well change how jurors make decisions, but without empirical research, we cannot know if these changes are for the better. Requiring reasons of jurors may not be the panacea we desire, but it seems clear that it will undermine the independence of jurors and juries

PAYING PARTICIPANTS:THE IMPACT OF COMPENSATION ON DATA QUALITY

Poor-quality data has the potential to increase error variance, reduce statistical power and effect sizes, and produce Type I or Type II errors. Paying participants is one technique researchers may use in an attempt to obtain high-quality data. Accordingly, two secondary datasets were used to examine the relationship between participant payment and data quality. The first dataset revealed that data quality did not differ between paid and unpaid undergraduates. Similarly, the second dataset showed that data quality did not differ between unpaid community participants and MTurkers. A comparison across studies showed that undergraduate students engaged in lower levels of careless responding than the community samples but the unpaid community sample outperformed the MTurk sample and both undergraduate samples. Taken together, the current findings suggest that offering financial incentives to undergraduate or community samples does not improve data quality but may improve data collection rates and increase the diversity of participants.</p

Bias in mock investigator decision-making: The influence of prototypicality and emotional display on perceptions of victims during the reporting phase of a sexual assault case

The present research sought to examine the potentially interactive effects of victim emotional display (sadness vs. anger vs. calm (control)) and victim prototypicality (stranger vs. acquaintance suspect) during the reporting phase of a criminal sexual assault case on mock investigators’ perceptions of victim credibility and decision-making to proceed with the investigation

The Impact of Victim Physical Maturity and Judicial Instruction on Jury Decision making in Child Sexual Abuse cases.

The current study investigates the relationship between victim physical maturity and judicial instruction on the outcomes of child sexual abuse (CSA) trials. We will employ a 2 (Victim physical maturity: Less mature vs. More mature) x 2 (Judicial instruction: Psychosocial-specific instruction vs General instruction) between-subjects design. Participants will read a vignette detailing a case of CSA, render a verdict (guilty vs. not-guilty), and respond to case-related measures (e.g., victim credibility, perceptions of psychosocial maturity, guilt)

Reasoned Verdicts: Oversold?

Jurors are lay fact-finders, untrained in the complexities of law and legal rules, and yet reasoned verdicts require that their reasons conform precisely to the law. This difficulty is the impetus for additional interaction with the court, as jurors must often call on legal assistance when drafting their verdicts. This necessity undermines the independence and power of jurors and opens the door for external pressures and biases to encroach on jurors’ decisions. When judges overturn jury verdicts that they consider insufficiently reasoned, judges substitute their judgments for those of the jurors. In addition, reasoned verdicts may lead to post hoc rationalizing rather than predecisional reasoning, and can be subject to poor framing and question construction. Ultimately, it seems a worthy goal to maximize jurors’ decision making while insulating such decisions from external influences. Requiring reasons of jurors may well change how jurors make decisions, but without empirical research, we cannot know if these changes are for the better. Requiring reasons of jurors may not be the panacea we desire, but it seems clear that it will undermine the independence of jurors and juries