FPSY3900: Emotion and the Contemporary Jury

Lecture 9

blank of a rational juror may not be realistic

court expectations

blank biases can be hard to stop

emotional

Mechanisms of Emotion

• Affective forecasting

• Affect as feedback

• Affect as cognitive appraisal

• Immediate emotion

• Disgust-driven moral judgements

• Emotion regulation

Affective Forecasting Research - Gilbert et al. (1998) resulted in?

Overestimation of affective response

• overestimate how a bad outcome is gonna make us feel (vice versa)

• overestimate emotions

Reasons for Overestimation - Gilbert et al. (1998)

• Overestimate duration and intensity

• Underestimate ability to cope

  • Ex: final verdict is not guilty when we expected guilty; we tend to be very upset

  • if we here the words not guilty we’ll be very upset but we actually underestimate how we actually cope with things

Affective Forecasting and the Cosby Trial

• expect to feel good or bad if he is found innocent

• directed them to feeling guilty by putting a star in prison

• may direct them to feel guilty that the victim is not get the justice

  • you will feel bad for the victim if the defendant is found not guilty

• if cosby is being attacked by society and being sentenced into prison; you may feel bad

  • redirect your emotions to the not guilty

• haven’t felt the emotion yet

Two processing systems of Affect as Feedback

• System I (affective and heuristic)

• System II (deliberate and analytical)

Affective as Feedback Research - Huntsinger et al. (2014)

• Judgements start at system I

• Positive mood → Stick with System I

• Negative mood → switch to System II

  • taking a step back to critically think about what happened and why you may be feeling that way

Positive mood → Stick with System blank

1

Negative mood → Switch to System blank

2

Affective as Feedback and the Cosby Trial

• will go first into system 1

• however there are some people who will go into system 2

  • courts and judges tell them/expect them to

• based on their own biases

• jurors emotional responses will either reinforce them into continue using system 1 or switch to system 2

  • can switch back and forth

Affect as Cognitive Appraisal Research - Lerner et al. (2015); Tiedens & Linton (2001)

• Anger → heuristic processing

  • force us into swift heuristic judgment

  • force us into system 1

  • tend to make risky decisions

  • jumping to conclusion - directing blame onto the defendant

  • attributing guilty to suspect

  • Reading Case Vignette

    • jurors who were angry perceived a greated intent within the defendant

    • assignmend more control to the defendant

    • acted more punitively to defenant'; given harsher punishment

• Fear/sadness → deliberate and analytical processing

  • pushes them into system 2

  • less risky decisions; taking information into account

  • more deliberate with decisions

  • Sad Mock Jurors

    • were able to identify inconsistencies in statements in comparison to neutral jurors

    • because they felt sad they switched into system 2

    • neutral jurors are most likely in system 1

The same stimulus can illicit different blank

emotions

blank processing provides automatic emotional determinants on risk assessment and moral social judgement

System I

Immediate Emotion Research - Finucane et al. (2000)

Emotion alters how the relationship between risks and benefits is perceived

• Positive mood → less risk, more benefit

• Negative mood → more risk, less benefit

Immediate Emotion Research - Dasgupta et al. (2009)

Enhancement of implicit biases

• Ex: white people who experience negative emotions from POC (black, arab, hispanic etc.)

  • Ex: seeing a hispanic down the street may cause more fear

• enhancing stereotypes

Immediate Emotion and the Cosby Trial

• juror will hear info and how they immediately/instinctually respond

• if they experience intense anger after hearing the SA it will trigger an immediate affective response

  • inflated risk of acquittal

• immediate response is guiding how risky or beneficial their decisions will impact the outcome

Disgust-driven Moral Judgements Research - Nunez et al. (2015)

• Emotional reactions to violated norms → influence of juror decisions

• Anger/Disgust → increase death sentence convictions

  • triggering moral judgements

  • more willing to assign the death penalty

Disgust-driven Moral Judgements Research - Bastian et al. (2013)

• Anger and disgust are highly correlated emotions

  • will often co-occur

  • if you experience both you will be more severe in punishments

• Disgust/Anger → moral outrage → more sever punishments 

Disgust-driven Moral Judgements and the Cosby Trial

• if there were jurors who reacted more emotionally and anger/disgust they will see that a moral judgmenet has been violated

  • would find him more guilty

• how certain emotions are tied together and that will determine how punitive they are towards the defendant

Emotion Regulation Research - Feinberg et al. (2012)

• Cognitive reappraisal increases reliance on deliberation

  • if we are able to regulate our emotions we are better able to regulate what is going on in system 1 it then turns into system 2

• Increases use of system II processing

Emotion Regulation Research - Kligyte et al. (2013)

Cognitive reappraisal → limited influence of anger

• if you’re able to control your anger you will be to take yourself out of that mindset

• putting more attentions towards the facts of the case

Emotion Regulation and the Cosby Trial

may feel immediate anger but being aware that it is skewing their decision making

Expectation of the Court

• Jurors are neutral fact finders

• Not to be influenced by emotion

Role of Emotion

• Can impact processing of information

• Can influence decision-making

Emotion Provoking Aspects of Trial - Example

victim impact statement

stereotypical decision making is blank

surface level

feedback of the affect is related to blank

emotion

subjective is seen as being blank and blank

easy; quick

Anger → heuristic processing

• force us into system 1

• tend to make risky decisions
  jumping to conclusion

  • directing blame onto the defendant

• attributing guilt to suspect

• Reading Case Vignette

• jurors who were angry perceived a great intent within the defendant

• assigned more control to the defendant

• acted more punitively to the defendant

  • given harsher punishment

Fear/sadness → deliberate and analytical processing

• pushes them into system 2

• less risky decisions

• taking information into account

• more deliberate with decisions

• Sad Mock Jurors

  • were able to identify inconsistencies in statements in comparison to neutral jurors

  • because they felt sad they switched into system 2
    neutral jurors are most likely in system 1

According to the ‘Disgust-driven moral judgements’ mechanism of emotion, emotional responses manifest as a result of?

Perceived violation of social norms