Punishing Goliath: Biased Juror Decision-Making Against Wealthy Defendants and Corporations

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Description
Civil juries are becoming an increasingly rare means of resolving civil disputes. One reason for this is widespread mistrust in jury decision-making do to highly publicized nuclear verdicts where verdicts do not seem to match the alleged harm suffered by…

Civil juries are becoming an increasingly rare means of resolving civil disputes. One reason for this is widespread mistrust in jury decision-making do to highly publicized nuclear verdicts where verdicts do not seem to match the alleged harm suffered by a plaintiff. Critics allege that jurors are biased against defendants with deep pockets. This research aims to test whether there is evidence of so-called deep-pocket bias in juror decision-making. Previous research has compared how the wealth of defendants impacts jurors’ verdicts while other studies have compared how jurors’ verdicts are impacted when the defendant is an individual versus a corporation. The first aim is to explore the impact of defendant wealth and corporate identity on jurors’ liability verdicts and damage awards. The second aim is to explore whether the theory of dyadic morality helps to explain any potential observed deep-pocket biases. The study tested the hypothesis that perceptions of a defendant’s moral agency (in other words, their responsibility and intentionality) would predict jurors’ liability verdicts while perceptions of a defendant’s moral patiency (in other words, their vulnerability and capacity for suffering) would predict jurors’ damage awards. In a study of mock juror decision-making, results concluded that when assessing the same alleged wrongdoing and harm, jurors were more confident in a liable verdict against wealthy defendants and corporate defendants compared to poor defendants and individuals as defendants. Higher perceptions of a defendant’s moral agency did explain these effects. However, there was no evidence that defendant wealth or corporate identity influenced damage awards. Ultimately, in cases where plaintiffs portray themselves as a small and vulnerable “David” taking on a large and resourceful “Goliath,” juror decision-making on liability verdicts is likely to unfairly punish “Goliath” defendants, revealing deep-pocket biases against wealthy defendants and corporations.
Date Created
2024
Agent

Seen but not Heard: The Effects of Race and Emotional Expression on Jurors’ Influence in Deliberation

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Description
Emotions are an important part of persuasion. Experimental research suggests that White and male jurors can use emotion to increase their influence, while other jurors cannot. This research builds on prior research by examining the relationship between naturally occurring emotion…

Emotions are an important part of persuasion. Experimental research suggests that White and male jurors can use emotion to increase their influence, while other jurors cannot. This research builds on prior research by examining the relationship between naturally occurring emotion during mock jury deliberations and the influence that jurors hold. Participants (N = 708) in 153 mock juries watched a murder trial video and deliberated on a verdict. Participants self-reported their experienced emotions and rated their perceptions of the other jurors’ emotion and influence. After data was collected, I extracted acoustic indicators of expressed emotion from each deliberation and used a speech emotion recognition model to classify each mock juror’s emotional expression. I hypothesized that there would be an overall effect of emotional expression on influence such that as mock jurors’ emotion increased, their influence would also increase. However, I hypothesized that a juror’s race and gender would moderate the relationship between emotion and influence such that White male jurors will be seen as more influential when they are more emotional, and that female jurors and jurors of color will be seen as less influential when they are more emotional. I also hypothesized that female jurors of color will be doubly penalized for being emotional, due to their “double-minority” status. Bayesian model averaging suggested that the data was most probable under models that included perceived emotion, race, and the interaction between the two, compared to models that did not. Consistent with the hypothesis, as participants were perceived as more emotional, their influence increased. In contrast to the hypotheses, being perceived as more emotional increased influence for both White and non-White mock jurors but the effect was stronger for non-White jurors. In other words, while all jurors benefited from being perceived as more emotional, non-White jurors benefited more than White jurors. Male jurors were more influential than female jurors, and gender did not interact with emotion.. Although being perceived as more emotional predicted increased influence for all participants, this research demonstrates that there are racial and gender disparities in the level of influence that someone might hold on a jury.
Date Created
2023
Agent

Selfies and Soul-Searching: Effects of Self-Objectification on the Relationship Between Social Media Use and Life Meaning

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Description
With its ever-increasing prevalence throughout the world, social media use has become a primary means of communication and connection with others. Much research has been dedicated to the topic of social media use, suggesting both positive and negative outcomes for…

With its ever-increasing prevalence throughout the world, social media use has become a primary means of communication and connection with others. Much research has been dedicated to the topic of social media use, suggesting both positive and negative outcomes for those who are online more frequently. While uploading content and interacting with posts that others have created is associated with social comparison and identity formation, there is little research to date that examines the relationship between social media use and an individual’s meaning in life. One of the greater benefits of social media use is the ease with which people can curate their own personal identities, and this has led to an increase in users—particularly young adults—posting sexualized images of themselves for social gain. Untested in prior research is the relationship between self-objectification via social media and life meaning. For my thesis, I proposed a moderation model in which participants who reported higher levels of self-objectified beliefs and online habits would also report lower levels of meaning in life. Furthermore, I hypothesized that there would be unique differences between genders and sexual orientations that would also serve as moderators, such that heterosexual women and LGBQ men would demonstrate the lowest levels of life meaning when reporting high levels of self-objectification. Results from analyses found that while there was no significant relationship between active social media use and meaning in life, there was a significant three-way interaction between objectified social media use, gender and sexual orientation, and meaning. Findings from this study provide support for previous research that has found LGBQ men and heterosexual women face the most adverse effects from self-objectification. These results suggest that self-objectified social media use can negatively impact life meaning for certain populations.
Date Created
2022
Agent

Examining the Relationship Between Regional Implicit Racial Biases & Racial Disparities in the Outcomes of Civil Trials

Description

Even though criminal justice outcomes frequently receive more media, public, and research attention than civil legal outcomes, civil legal outcomes are equally important in ensuring fairness, accountability, and justice for both individuals and society as a whole. This provides individuals…

Even though criminal justice outcomes frequently receive more media, public, and research attention than civil legal outcomes, civil legal outcomes are equally important in ensuring fairness, accountability, and justice for both individuals and society as a whole. This provides individuals an avenue to pursue justice and restitution for civil wrongs, protects civil rights, and compensates those who have been harmed financially. This study examined the relationship between regional implicit racial bias and racial disparities in outcomes of real-world civil trials. In particular, I explored whether the racial composition of the attorneys on the defense teams or race of the plaintiff predicted plaintiff verdicts and greater damage awards. I hypothesized that all-White defense attorney teams and plaintiffs would win their cases at higher rates and would subsequently be awarded more in damages than their non-White counterparts, especially in regions reporting high levels of implicit racial bias. Using real-world civil trials and Project Implicit Race IAT data, I conducted logistic and linear regression analyses to test the effects of race and regional bias on trial outcomes. The results showed that the likelihood of a pro-plaintiff verdict increased when the defense team included at least one non-White attorney. That is, more racially diverse defense teams won their cases less then all-White defense teams. Additionally, I found that the likelihood of a pro-plaintiff verdict decreased in regions reporting relatively higher levels of regional implicit racial bias. Future research aimed at understanding and reducing disparities and bias in the legal system should be extended to include civil trials and both attorney and client demographics.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent

Do Evaluators of Eyewitness Evidence Believe Highly Confident Eyewitnesses are Poorly Calibrated When They Experienced Suboptimal Witnessing Conditions?

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Description
It has recently been argued that high-confidence eyewitness identifications are highly likely to be accurate regardless of the quality of viewing conditions experienced by the witness. However, new evidence suggests that evaluators of eyewitness identification evidence (e.g., jurors) do not…

It has recently been argued that high-confidence eyewitness identifications are highly likely to be accurate regardless of the quality of viewing conditions experienced by the witness. However, new evidence suggests that evaluators of eyewitness identification evidence (e.g., jurors) do not trust highly confident eyewitnesses who experienced poor witnessing conditions. In fact, contextual information about poor witnessing conditions decreases evaluators’ belief of eyewitnesses to a greater extent for highly confident witnesses than for moderately confident witnesses. Why is the effect of witnessing-condition information greater for evaluations of high-confidence witnesses than for less confident witnesses? The current research tested the possibility that information about witnessing conditions influences evaluators’ perceptions of how well-calibrated a witness’s identification confidence is with the eyewitness’s accuracy. Using a paradigm adapted from the confidence calibration literature, I conducted an experiment to test this calibration account of the finding that witnessing condition information has a stronger effect on perceptions of highly confident witnesses than moderately confident witnesses. Although the results replicated the differential effects of witnessing condition context on perceptions of highly and moderately confident eyewitnesses, they failed to yield support for the confidence calibration hypothesis, potentially because the confidence calibration manipulation was ineffective. Directions for future research are discussed.
Date Created
2022
Agent

Evaluators' Perceptions of Suspect-Bias Variables

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Description
Evaluators of eyewitness evidence (e.g., judges, jurors) often must determine whether an eyewitness’s identification of a police suspect is accurate or mistaken. It has recently been argued that a particular class of variables—suspect-bias variables—pose a unique threat to the reliability…

Evaluators of eyewitness evidence (e.g., judges, jurors) often must determine whether an eyewitness’s identification of a police suspect is accurate or mistaken. It has recently been argued that a particular class of variables—suspect-bias variables—pose a unique threat to the reliability of eyewitness identification evidence. Unlike “general impairment” variables that generally impair eyewitness identification accuracy (e.g., poor viewing conditions, biased lineup instructions), suspect-bias variables produce a suspect-specific bias that increases the risk of confident misidentifications of innocent suspects. The goal of this research was to examine evaluators’ sensitivity to suspect-bias variables compared to general impairment variables, and to test whether sensitivity to suspect-bias differs as a function of whether the suspect-bias variable is under the control of the legal system (system suspect-bias) or outside of the legal system’s control (estimator suspect-bias). Participant-evaluators (N = 214) read eight crime vignettes paired with one of four different eyewitness variables (system suspect-bias, estimator suspect-bias, general impairment, or no-variable control) and rated the accuracy of each eyewitness. Evaluators also explained the reasoning for their accuracy rating, and their explanations were coded for mentions of procedural suggestion, eyewitness memory strength, memory contamination, and general eyewitness (un)reliability. Evaluators appear to be more sensitive to general impairment variables than to suspect-bias variables. This finding is alarming, as suspect-bias variables pose a greater threat to eyewitness reliability than general-impairment variables. Implications for the collection and evaluation of eyewitness evidence are discussed.
Date Created
2022
Agent

Lott Honors Thesis (Spring 2022)

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Description

There are numerous possibilities for virtual reality (VR) to improve upon the dissemination of information in several professional fields. Virtual reality has the capacity to be a useful tool in the judicial system related to its use in the presentation…

There are numerous possibilities for virtual reality (VR) to improve upon the dissemination of information in several professional fields. Virtual reality has the capacity to be a useful tool in the judicial system related to its use in the presentation of evidence to juries and other persons. Crime scenes are a crucial part of an investigation but are difficult to present to a jury. This experiment proposes an investigation to study the difference in the emotional impact of showing jurors an immersive virtual reality representation of a crime scene compared to traditional crime scene photos and the subsequent impact that the VR crime scene tour has on juror decision making. Participants will be randomly assigned to either a 3D VR recreation of a crime scene or be presented with crime scene photos. User responses will then be collected. The following study proposes a prototype for the recreation of a crime scene in VR using the real-world children of Darlie Routier murder case study.

Date Created
2022-05
Agent

Crime Scene VR

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Description

There are numerous possibilities for virtual reality (VR) to improve upon the dissemination of information in several professional fields. Virtual reality has the capacity to be a useful tool in the judicial system related to its use in the presentation…

There are numerous possibilities for virtual reality (VR) to improve upon the dissemination of information in several professional fields. Virtual reality has the capacity to be a useful tool in the judicial system related to its use in the presentation of evidence to juries and other persons. Crime scenes are a crucial part of an investigation but are difficult to present to a jury. This experiment proposes an investigation to study the difference in the emotional impact of showing jurors an immersive virtual reality representation of a crime scene compared to traditional crime scene photos and the subsequent impact that the VR crime scene tour has on juror decision making. Participants will be randomly assigned to either a 3D VR recreation of a crime scene or be presented with crime scene photos. User responses will then be collected. The following study proposes a prototype for the recreation of a crime scene in VR using the real-world children of Darlie Routier murder case study.

Date Created
2022-05
Agent

Crime Scene Reconstruction and Evidence Presentation in Virtual Reality

Description
There are numerous possibilities for virtual reality (VR) to improve upon the dissemination of information in several professional fields. Virtual reality has the capacity to be a useful tool in the judicial system related to its use in the presentation…

There are numerous possibilities for virtual reality (VR) to improve upon the dissemination of information in several professional fields. Virtual reality has the capacity to be a useful tool in the judicial system related to its use in the presentation of evidence to juries and other persons. Crime scenes are a crucial part of an investigation but are difficult to present to a jury. This experiment proposes an investigation to study the difference in the emotional impact of showing jurors an immersive virtual reality representation of a crime scene compared to traditional crime scene photos and the subsequent impact that the VR crime scene tour has on juror decision making. Participants will be randomly assigned to either a 3D VR recreation of a crime scene or be presented with crime scene photos. User responses will then be collected. The following study proposes a prototype for the recreation of a crime scene in VR using the real-world children of Darlie Routier murder case study.
Date Created
2022-05
Agent

Publics’ Perceptions of Machine Learning Based Risk Assessments

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Description
In the legal system, the prediction of a person’s risk of committing a crime has mostly been based on expert judgment. However, newer techniques that employ machine learning (ML)—a type of artificial intelligence—are being implemented throughout the justice system. Yet,…

In the legal system, the prediction of a person’s risk of committing a crime has mostly been based on expert judgment. However, newer techniques that employ machine learning (ML)—a type of artificial intelligence—are being implemented throughout the justice system. Yet, there is a lack of research on how the public perceives and uses machine learning risk assessments in legal settings. In two mock-trial vignette studies, the perception of ML-based risk assessments versus more traditional methods was assessed. Study 1 was a 2 (severity of crime: low, high) x 2 (risk assessment type: expert, machine learning) x 2 (risk outcome: low, high) between-subjects design. Participants expressed ethical concerns and discouraged the use of machine learning risk assessments in sentencing decisions, but punishment recommendations were not affected. Study 2 was a within-subjects design where participants were randomly assigned read through one of three crime scenarios (violent, white-collar, sex offense) and one of three risk assessment techniques (expert, checklist, machine learning). Consistent with Study 1, participants had ethical concerns and disagreed with the use of machine learning risk assessments in bail decisions, yet their own decisions and recommendations did not reflect these concerns. Overall, laypeople express skepticism toward these new methods, but do not appear to differentially rely on ML-based versus traditional risk assessments in their own judgments.
Date Created
2021
Agent
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