Welcome to lesson thirteen. As I’m sure you’ve discovered by
now, every lesson encompasses only a brief survey of the information
available on that topic. In fact, for most of these lectures, we could
take an entire course just from that topic. This lecture will be on
psychology and law.
Let’s move to slide two and begin. We’re going to briefly discuss these
topics that typically interest individuals who are interested in the
study of psychology and law. Jury selection and jury decision making, an
exploration of morality versus law, eye witness testimony, race bias,
interrogation techniques and procedural versus distributive justice.
Let’s move to slide three and begin. In terms of jury selection or jury
decision making, there are essentially several areas of research. One is
that we try to pick juries that are similar to the defendant. These are
juries who will be most sympathetic to the defendant’s issue. There are
also class and weapon issues. For example, class can be a good indicator of how
someone will vote on a jury. If you’re choosing a jury for the
defendant, then typically you want people who are members of his
socio-economic class. There are also issues of weapons. For example,
people who own guns or don’t own guns. How do they feel about weapons in
general? This can also have a huge impact on how the jury decides the
case depending on if this case, of course, involves violence.
Attractiveness of the defendant. Typically more attractive defendants
will garner less harsh sentences and more acquittals. There is one case
where this is not true. The case where the defendant has used his or her
attractiveness in the commission of the crime. For example, con artists
typically use their attractiveness in order to lure potential victims
into some sort of scam. For these people, their attractiveness will
actually work against them. In addition, when presenting a case, one can
use either a story telling approach or a forensics approach. The story
telling approach gives the jurors a plausible story. On this day, here
is the series of events, here’s how they happened and so on. A forensics
approach typically uses scientific evidence to display whether or not
the defendant was at the commission of the crime, whether there’s proof
and so on. For most crimes and most juries, the story telling approach
is superior. Most jurors try to have a story to tell other jurors in
trying to convince them. Forensics often do not provide jurors with this
sort of story telling or ability to chronologically explain what they
believed happened. Therefore the story telling approach usually favors the
defendant. What you find then is the prosecution often presents a
converse story or a story that is in direct opposition to the one
presented by the defendant’s lawyers.
Let’s move to slide four. We’ve discussed over the course of this class
information bias in terms of group polarization and cognitive
neutrality. You should have a good idea about how these things would
then work in jury decision making to sway a jury. There are also gender
differences in terms of information bias. That is, men and women differ
in how they approach the jury room. Women tend to be socio-emotional
leaders and maybe hesitant to go against the jury. If there is a
majority in the jury that believes one thing, it is most unlikely to be
a woman who will disagree. Therefore having a jury that is made up of
only one gender is usually not helpful. Women tend to help the jury
process by helping members of the jury to negotiate to a decision that
is consensus as opposed to hanging the jury. You’re much more likely to
have a hung jury when you have an all male jury than if you have an all
female jury. Over the years, there’s been debate about whether we need
twelve people in a jury versus six people. Twelve people certainly
provide us with more diversity. Six person juries, on the other hand,
have less diversity due to a fewer number of people involved. Did they
come to similar decisions? In most cases they do. However, in the six
person jury it is more unlikely that you’ll have someone stand out or be
willing to voice their opinion. However, in a twelve person jury not
only will you maybe have one, but you might even have two people willing
to try to get the jury to decide against the majority. This can be very
useful and probably presents more of a fair trial for individuals who
find themselves in court.
Let’s move on to slide five. Morality and the law. Often the way we
teach our children values, especially in America, we don’t allow them to
distinguish between sin and law. For example there are many laws which
do not necessarily constitute or directly relate to any morality that we
would feel comfortable endorsing. For example, the citizen who drives
fast probably not, but if you ask children they will say it’s wrong,
both morally and legally. You go to other countries where, for example,
drugs are legalized. Are drugs necessarily bad in that country? Do
children there consider them a sin? The answer is usually no. There is a
law in America, therefore, we believe that it is sinful or immoral in
some way. We also have laws about alcohol and about voting in terms of
age limits. So something that is a sin when you’re 17 or 18 becomes
perfectly legal when you’re 21. Any time there’s an age limit at which
something becomes ok, chances are that we have a distinction between
morality and law. However in America we tend to teach that the law
equals morality. It is important to know this, especially if you’re engaged
in a jury selection. Is your jury willing to distinguish between the
legal letter of the law and morality?
Let’s move on to slide six. Eye witness testimony is typically very
persuasive. If someone indicates that they saw the crime being
committed, the jury is very likely to believe that. However, it’s
incredibly inaccurate. Fifty-two percent of cases that are tried in this
country involve some error in eye witness identification. That is, they
identify the wrong person, they identify someone who looks similar or in
their eye witness identification, they describe a person who does not
necessarily fit the description of the defendant. What we do know is
that cross race identification is worse than chance. They’ve done studies in which
you have 5 individuals in a lineup. We mean that just by chance, you
have a 20% chance of choosing the correct person. They then show you a
videotape in which some crime is committed. They then put the suspect in
a lineup with four other individuals. If you are an opposite or a
different race than the person who has committed the crime, you have a
less than 20% chance of correctly identifying that person. For example,
white witnesses identifying Black defendants or Black criminals are very
much to be suspect. In addition, Black people identifying white individuals
are also not better than chance. Any sort of cross identification is
worse than the 20% rate you would get if you just allowed a computer to
choose randomly who actually committed the crime.
Let’s move on to slide seven. Interrogation techniques have also
received much research attention as of late. We know for example or have
heard from TV that leading the witness is typically a bad idea, that is
asking questions about did you see this man hold a gun is considered
leading a witness. You should ask the witness what they saw instead of
giving them some cues about what they may have seen. Interrogation
techniques can also add facts. The idea here is that by simply
introducing the topic, all of a sudden witnesses will begin to recall
that yes that topic or that object was occurring, was present in the
situation. This is also why typically we use polygraph multiple choice
to obtain good polygraph results. For example, you give someone the
choice of how much they believe is stolen from a cash register; $50,
$100, $30, $300. While you don’t expect that the witness is necessarily
going to give a correct answer, especially if they stole the money, what
you will see is that when you say the answer that most corresponds to
the accurate answer, that if they committed the crime or have
awareness of the crime, that they will
show an increase in physiological arousal in the accurate amount as
mentioned.
Let’s move on to slide eight. Procedural versus distributive justice has
also received much research attention. Procedural justice is the idea
that there’s a fairness in the procedure for determining rewards and
punishment. That is, even though everyone doesn’t get the equal raise or
the equal jail term, as long as the procedure by which it was determined
is fair, that is a trial by jury, then we perceive that as procedurally
just. Distributive justice means that there’s a fairness in the
distribution of rewards and punishment regardless of the procedure. So
if everyone who commits murder receives the same sentence, we would see
this as distributively just, even if the procedure by which they were
sentenced is unjust. People typically have a stronger reaction to
procedural injustice than distributive justice. However this develops
over time. Children are much more aware of distributive injustice than
procedural. For example, the older child receiving the larger portion of
food is typically not seen as distributively just, even if the
procedural fairness or fairness in the procedure that is once you become
six years old you will get two cookies instead of one is not something
that children are aware of. They respond very harshly to distributive
injustices. However, as we get older and you look at the same situation procedural justice is usually
enough for them to perceive that there is fairness involved and it
reduces anger at the system.
All of these topics are involved in psychology and law. Your book goes
into much more detail about them. This will conclude the last lecture of
this course. Thank you very much for your time and attention.
