The Effect of Information Quality Evaluation on Selective Exposure in Informational Cognitive Dissonance: The Role of Information Novelty

In fictional decision-making, research on selective exposure (the tendency to expose oneself to consistent information and avoid inconsistent information, Festinger, 1957) shows that this phenomenon may be partly due to a biased evaluation quality of information. The present study seeks to establish whether this biased evaluation also occurs with informational dissonance (Vaidis and Gosling, 2011). More specifically, we examined (1) whether an individual’s attitude or behavior may be biased by information perception; and (2) whether this phenomenon was related to the perception of the information’s novelty. In two successive studies, participants evaluated the quality and the novelty of information and their desire to expose themselves to it. The information in the texts dealt with the effects of passive smoking, alcohol, and electromagnetic waves (Study 1) and GMOs (Study 2). For each of these topics, one text emphasized their harmlessness (tobacco and electromagnetic waves) or the positive effects (alcohol and GMOs), whereas the second presented the negative effects on health. The hypotheses were tested using moderated mediation models. The results differed according to the subjects addressed and the novelty of the information submitted. Among several possible explanations for the findings, we suggest that the valence of the texts on items considered harmful for health plays a role

Juger en justice : influence de la mise en récit des conclusions du juge d'instruction sur les jugements judiciaires

The Story Model of juror decision making (Pennington & Hastie, 1993) argues that jurors' verdicts are determined by a logic of story reconstruction of evidence. Developed in a North-American judiciary procedural context, this model has received empirical supports through experimental methodology reflecting the adversarial justice system. The aim of the present work is to examine the story model on jurors' judgments construction inserted in the French inquisitorial system. This latter can be distinguished by the fact that it implies a pretrial investigation conducted by a judge in an impartial stance. The reading of the pre-trial judge's conclusion, recorded in an order, is the first information jurors are confronted to during the trial. Thus, the information organisation of the pre trial judge's order can be decisive in jurors' judgment construction. First, an analysis of the organisationnal pattern and discursive style of a judge's orders corpus show a fairly important variability in the evidence report. Then, a research program of six experiments was carried out to test the hypothesis about the consequences of information organisation in judges' order. Results are opposite to the pattern predicted by the Story Model. Therefore, more specific conditions were determined the predictive validity of the story model in an inquisitorial procedural context. In a more widely perspective, this work questions the adaptation of psychological models between different judicial systems and culture.Le modèle de récit (« Story Model » ; Pennington & Hastie, 1993) suppose qu'une logique de construction narrative des preuves détermine les jugements de culpabilité des jurés. Développé dans le cadre de la procédure judiciaire nord-américaine, ce modèle a été validé selon des méthodologies expérimentales reflétant le contexte procédural accusatoire. L'objectif de la thèse est de mettre à l'épreuve le modèle du récit dans le cadre de la construction des jugements des jurés insérés dans la procédure judiciaire inquisitoire française. Cette dernière se caractérise notamment par l'instruction préalable au procès, menée par un juge, visant à réunir les preuves de manière impartiale. La lecture des conclusions du juge d'instruction, consignées dans une « ordonnance de renvoi », à l'ouverture du procès est le premier contact officiel des jurés avec l'affaire qu'ils vont juger. Dès lors, la mise en récit des preuves figurant dans l'ordonnance de renvoi peut s'avérer déterminante dans la construction des jugements des jurés. Tout d'abord, une analyse de la structure et du style discursif d'un corpus d'ordonnances de renvoi met en évidence une variabilité relativement importante dans le rapport des preuves. Puis, un programme expérimental de six études a été mené afin de tester des hypothèses concernant les conséquences de l'organisation de l'information dans les ordonnances de renvoi. Les résultats obtenus sont inverses aux prédictions du modèle du récit et ont conduit à définir des conditions plus spécifiques de la validité prédictive du modèle dans le cadre d'une procédure inquisitoire. Plus largement, l'ensemble de ce travail pose la question de la transposition de modèles psychologiques entre systèmes et cultures juridiques différents

L’intime conviction : entre cadres légaux, représentations et pratiques chez les magistrats et jurés en cour d’assises

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Perceptions of male victim blame in a child sexual abuse case : effects of gender, age and need for closure

According to the gender stereotypes attributed to men, and research on adult male victims, boys subjected to sexual abuse are expected to be better able to defend themselves than girls, and are thought to be more likely to adopt a proactive attitude in the victim-perpetrator relationship. They are consequently regarded as more blameworthy than female victims. In the present study, 384 French respondents read through a sexual abuse scenario in which the child victim's gender, perpetrator's gender and victim's age (7 vs. 12 years old) were manipulated. As expected, male respondents blamed the victim more than female respondents did, especially when the victim was a boy. Furthermore, male respondents blamed the perpetrator less than female respondents did, especially when the perpetrator was a woman and the victim a boy. However, these effects were observed for victims of both 7 and 12 years old while it was expected only for the 12-year-old victims. Finally, as expected, respondents who expressed a high need for closure perceived the victim as less credible and more guilty than respondents who expressed a low need for closure, particularly when the victim was 12 years old

Emotional context, rehearsal and memories: the mutual contributions and possible integration of flashbulb memory and eyewitness identification research

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The influence of criminal facial stereotypes on juridic judgments

In order to further research into the influence of facial stereotypes on juridic judgments, we investigated the influence of face/offence congruency on such judgments, taking into account the strength of the case against the defendant and the maturity and attractiveness attributes of the defendant's face. Each participant (N = 169) read a fictitious case file that: (1) established the defendant's guilt with either a high degree of ambiguity or with a low degree of ambiguity; (2) included a photo of the defendant that was congruent with the offence or not congruent with the offence. Participants were asked to evaluate the defendant's guilt (in a dichotomous manner and on a continuous scale), to state their degree of confidence in their decision, to recommend a sentence, and to rate the attractiveness and maturity of the defendant's face. The results show that participants' judgments were affected by face/offence congruency and that this influence was not dependent on the ambiguity of the case or on the maturity or attractiveness of the face

Confirmatory Information Processing in Legal Decision: Effect of Intimate Conviction

International audienceA large body of research has focused on legal decision-making in mixed courts of lay and professional judges. However, few studies have been conducted to test the impact on evidence processing of the intimate conviction instruction (ICI), a decision rule based on impression formation used in civil law systems. The influence of the two facets of the ICI (the decision rule and the motivation requirement) on confirmatory information processing (CIP) was studied in a harm-to-person case. Using a methodology combining the simulated juror and CIP paradigms, the decision rule (based on impression vs. rationality) and the motivation requirement (required vs. not required) were manipulated to observe their impact on assimilation and selective exposure biases. Results showed significant interactions of the two facets of the ICI but only on the assimilation bias. These results are discussed in the light of the evidence processes in the context of legal decision-making in criminal courts

Effects of the "intimate conviction" instruction on the processing of judicial information

Introduction and objective: The aim of this study was to examine the effects of the "intimate conviction" (IC) instruction on the processing of judicial information. The IC instruction encourages the use of impressions to form a verdict. As such, according to cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST) (Epstein, 1994), it is more likely to (1) elicit experiential information processing, and (2) bias judgments, compared with instructions prompting the rational and objective processing of information running counter to IC (CIC). Method and results: Ninety-four mock jurors were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions (IC, opposite IC and control), and asked to view a video of a criminal appeal hearing, deliver judgments and perform a thought-listing task. Results confirmed that, in the IC and control conditions, participants were more likely to (1) process evidence in an experiential mode, (2) judge the defendant's acts as being more intentional than participants in the opposite IC condition. However, contrary to our expectations, the effects of the instructions on the attribution of intention were not mediated by the information processing mode. Conclusion: Directions for future research and the implications of the present study for judicial systems using inquisitorial procedure are discussed

This News “Transported” Me to my Verdict! Narrative Transportation, PTP and Juror Decision-Making

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Press articles and influence processes : the different effects of incriminating information and crime story information on judgments of guilt

The present study examines how potential jury members' judgments are affected by two types of information provided by the media: (1) information that is directly incriminating for the accused and (2) crime story information, that is, information about the events of the crime but not directly pertaining to the defendant's innocence or guilt. Although the influence of directly incriminating information has been widely researched, the effect of crime story information has never been studied. Our objective was to test the hypothesis that incriminating information affects judgments directly, whereas crime story information affects judgments indirectly via the arousal of negative emotions. We did this by coding the two types of information in 78 press articles about a criminal trial heard in France. Participants (N = 312) were asked to read the articles and then indicate their anger arousal and give their judgment about the accused. The results support our hypothesis. We conclude by discussing the contribution of our findings to research into the media's influence on legal cases