Chapter 16

1. Chapter 16 Social Psychology and the Law

2. Social Psychology and the Law • Studying the legal system helps psychologists see how behavior occurs in complex, personally relevant, and emotion-laden contests.

3. Eyewitness Testimony • Eyewitness identifications are frequently inaccurate.

4. Eyewitness Testimony • The three basic processes of acquisition, storage, and retrieval influence eyewitness memory, just as they influence all memory.

5. Eyewitness Testimony • Two groups of factors influence eyewitness identification • Estimator variables • concern the eyewitness and the situation • System variables • are under the direct control of the criminal justice or legal system.

6. Eyewitness Testimony • Viewing Opportunity • The longer witnesses look and the more attention they are able to pay, the more accurate their identifications • However, witnesses are just as likely to think they can make an identification if they have witnessed an event under poor viewing conditions.

7. Eyewitness Testimony • Stress and Arousal • Stress increases memory for the event itself but decreases memory for what preceded and followed the incident

8. Eyewitness Testimony • Weapon Focus Effect • People tend to keep their eye on weapons because of their danger and novelty • This distracts their attention from the robbers

9. Eyewitness Testimony • Own-Race Bias • People are more accurate in identifying members of their own race • Own-race bias decreases with experience with other groups • Thus blacks are more accurate in identifying whites than vice versa.

10. Eyewitness Testimony • Retention Interval • Accuracy drops with time rapidly at first, then levels off.

11. Eyewitness Testimony • Suggestive Questioning • The way witnesses are questioned influences their memories of the event. • Some questions are suggestive but not deliberately misleading • E.g. Loftus & Palmer found that people said a car had been going faster in an accident if they asked about its speed when it “smashed” into the other car as opposed to “hit” it • Other questions are deliberately misleading, asking about nonexistent details.

12. Eyewitness Testimony • Three hypotheses for how post-event information affects memory • over-writing • forgetting • source monitoring • People retain memories of both the event and any post-event information but cannot identify the source of the memories • Evidence supports the latter.

13. Eyewitness Testimony • Lineup Biases • The way lineups are conducted can have a tremendous effect on the accuracy of eyewitness identification.

14. Eyewitness Testimony • Show-ups • asks witnesses to indicate whether or not a single witness is the perpetrator • Simultaneous lineups • show the witness several potential suspects at the same time. • Sequential lineups • show potential suspects one at a time

15. Eyewitness Testimony • Sequential lineups allow the most careful attention to each person and the most careful decision-making and are most accurate.

16. Eyewitness Testimony • Another aspect of lineups is choosing foils (people other than the suspect in the lineup). • Identifications are most accurate when all of the foils look like the witness’s initial description of the perpetrator.

17. Eyewitness Testimony • Instructions given to eyewitnesses are also important. • Identifications are most accurate when the witness is told that the suspect “may or may not” be in the lineup.

18. Eyewitness Testimony • This research has affected U.S. Department of Justice guidelines for police to use when questioning eyewitnesses.

19. Criminal Defendants • Voluntary False Confessions. • Coerced complaint false confessions • when people are pressured to admit guilt but privately believe their own innocence. • Coerced internalized false confessions • when people come to believe they committed crimes they did not commit. • This may occur when the behavior seems plausible and when other people claim they are guilty.

20. Criminal Defendants • Lie Detection • Observers do not detect lies at much better than chance rates • Despite nonverbal leakage • Law enforcement professionals are generally not more accurate • There is no correlation between how well people believe they detect lies and how well they actually do

21. Criminal Defendants • Polygraph (“lie detector”) tests • ask suspects to answer questions while hooked to a machine that records physiological responses. • The control question test asks about the critical, as well as about unrelated, wrongdoings. • The accuracy of polygraph tests is debated • advocates claim 90% accuracy, while published research estimates 57-76% accuracy, not much better than chance (50%).

22. Criminal Defendants • How do characteristics of defendants influence the decisions made by juries? • Physically attractive defendants are less likely to be found guilty. • Black defendants receive disproportionately harsher sentences than whites. • This result is found in archival studies while the results of lab studies are inconsistent.

23. Criminal Defendants • Aversive racism theory • People should suppress racist thoughts when race is salient • Race may have an effect when people are unaware that it may have one. • Race may have an effect when people’s behavior can be justified by factors other than race. • According to this theory, jurors would be more likely to discriminate in trials where the race of the defendant is not made salient.

24. Criminal Defendants • Sommers and Ellsworth (2000, 2001) • Participants read about a white or black defendant who slapped his girlfriend in public. • Half read that the defendant said, “You know better than to talk that way about a man in front of his friends.” The other half read the same sentence with the words “white man” or “black man.” • In the first condition (race not salient), white participants made harsher judgments against the black than against the white; there was no difference in the race-salient condition.

25. Juries • Jury Selection • The voir dire process allows judges and lawyers to question prospective jurors • Goal is to assess the presence of biases that would interfere with their ability to render a fair judgment. • Peremptory challenges allow attorneys to eliminate jurors for a number of reasons • E.g., occupation or personality traits (but not race or gender)

26. Juries • Demographic factors are not always predictive of verdicts • this is most likely when group membership is relevant to the case

27. Juries • Jurors who are high in authoritarianism are more likely to convict. • “Death qualified” juries are more likely to convict.

28. Juries • According to Hastie and Pennington’s story model of jury decision making, jurors use the evidence presented in trials to create stories about the events in question. • Multiple competing stories may be created • The story that best fits the evidence determines the verdict chosen.

29. Juries • Comprehension of Judicial Instructions • Juries may have problems understanding and applying legal instructions. • On-going research is looking for solutions, for example, rewriting instructions in more “user-friendly” language and allowing jurors to take notes.

30. Juries • Jury Deliberations • Twelve-person juries are more representative and spend more time deliberating than six-person juries. • Juries using a unanimous decision rule discuss the evidence longer and more thoroughly than juries using a majority decision rule.

31. Expert Testimony • Psychologists are increasingly asked to give expert testimony in court cases. • Judges must consider the scientific reliability of the evidence, but may lack the necessary background to rule effectively.

32. Expert Testimony • Expert testimony that draws links between the research and the particular case has larger influence on jurors than research that just presents the research findings.