Reducing the Biasing Effects of Judges' Nonverbal Behavior With Simplified Jury Instruction

This research hypothesized that using simpler jury instructions would reduce jurors' reliance on judges' nonverbal behavior. Mock jurors were given either standard or simplified jury instructions, heard actual trial testimony, and then saw a judge reading jury instructions (i.e., a judge w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of applied psychology Vol. 82; no. 4; pp. 590 - 598
Main Authors:	Halverson, Andrea M, Hallahan, Mark, Hart, Allen J, Rosenthal, Robert
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Washington, DC American Psychological Association 01-08-1997 American Psychological Association, etc
Subjects:	Adjudication Applied psychology Behavior Bias Biological and medical sciences Court decisions Female Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology Human Influences Instructions Instructions to juries Interpersonal communication Judges Judges & magistrates Judicial process Juries Male Miscellaneous Moderators Nonverbal behaviour Nonverbal Communication Psychology Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry Psychology. Psychophysiology State court decisions Studies USA United States > US Human Social influence Trial Juror Social interaction Non verbal communication Guilt Instruction Interpersonal relation Judge Judgment
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Summary:	This research hypothesized that using simpler jury instructions would reduce jurors' reliance on judges' nonverbal behavior. Mock jurors were given either standard or simplified jury instructions, heard actual trial testimony, and then saw a judge reading jury instructions (i.e., a judge who had an expectation or belief of either guilt or innocence for a defendant). This experiment was conducted twice, once with a student population and once with an adult population. For the students, neither the judges' expectations nor the jury instructions were strongly related to the jurors' verdicts. For the adults, jurors returned more guilty verdicts overall when judges thought the defendant was guilty, and this trend was moderated by the jury instructions. The relationship between judges' expectations and jurors' verdicts was strongly positive when standard instructions were given but was weaker and in the opposite direction when simplified instructions were given.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:	0021-9010 1939-1854
DOI:	10.1037/0021-9010.82.4.590