Jury Decision Making: Extra-Legal Influences

Vocabulary flashcards covering extra-legal influences on jury decision-making, including contextual attribution, defendant and victim demographics, implicit bias mechanisms, and judicial interventions.

Extra-Legal Influences

Non-evidentiary factors—such as contextual circumstances, personal characteristics, stereotypes, and unconscious biases—that affect juror evaluations and verdict decisions.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency for jurors to overestimate internal dispositions (e.g., assuming a defendant is inherently a 'bad person') and underestimate external situational factors when explaining criminal actions (Heider, 1958; Ross, 1977).

Internal Causes

Attributions that explain a crime through the defendant's disposition or character flaws (e.g., 'They're a bad person').

External Causes

Attributions that explain a crime through circumstantial or environmental pressures rather than individual moral character (e.g., 'The situation led to this').

Framing Effect

A cognitive bias in which decisions are influenced by the specific manner in which facts are presented, leading to different interpretations of the exact same evidence.

Pre-Trial Publicity

Information and news media disseminated before a trial that can shape expectations and cause potential jurors to form opinions prior to hearing evidence in court.

Implicit Biases

Unconscious attitudes, stereotypes, and associations that involuntarily influence an individual's understanding, actions, and judgment (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995).

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

A psychological test (administered online or on paper) designed to measure unconscious stereotypes and implicit attitudes toward specific social groups.

Defendant Race Effect

The research finding that mock jurors render harsher verdicts and stronger punishments (longer prison terms, higher fines) for Black and Indigenous defendants in violent crimes, but harsher punishments for White defendants in crimes like fraud.

Defendant Gender Effect

The empirical finding that mock jurors consistently impose stronger punishments on male defendants compared to female defendants (Mazzella & Feingold, 1994).

Defendant Socioeconomic Status (SES) Effect

The consistent finding that mock jurors render more guilty verdicts and hand down harsher punishments to low SES defendants compared to high SES defendants (Mazzella & Feingold, 1994).

Defendant Attractiveness Effect

The tendency for mock jurors to render fewer guilty verdicts, shorter prison terms, and milder penalties—especially in robbery and sexual assault cases—for defendants perceived as attractive (Mazzella & Feingold, 1994).

Victim Characteristics in Sentencing

The pattern wherein mock jurors impose stronger punishments when the victim is White (vs. Black) or female, while the victim's SES and perceived attractiveness have no significant effect on juror judgments.

Diversity Training (Jury Intervention)

An intervention proposed by Jackson et al. (2014) that educates jurors about universal biases, suggests methods to address bias, and encourages non-confrontational language.

Jury Orientation Videos

Standard introductory videos viewed by jurors that scholars, such as Roberts (2012), argue should explicitly define implicit bias and invite jurors to take the Implicit Association Test.

Washington State Implicit Bias Program

A court initiative featuring a 20-minute video introducing implicit bias and specific jury instructions defining unconscious bias as stereotypes or attitudes people may consciously reject but express without awareness.

Voir Dire (Bias Limitations)

The preliminary questioning process in which jurors are asked if they can deliver a fair and impartial verdict; limited by jurors' lack of awareness of their own biases and reluctance to admit them.

Race-Switching

A courtroom strategy proposed by Lee (2013) for self-defence cases where jurors are asked to mentally reverse the racial identities of the parties (e.g., Black defendant/White victim) to check whether their verdict would differ.

Expert Testimony on Implicit Bias

A proposed judicial strategy—not yet formally offered—intended to educate jurors on the scientific mechanisms of implicit bias and how it differs from explicit bias.

Barriers to Addressing Implicit Bias

Obstacles that hinder reforms to judicial bias, consisting of resource constraints (money, technology, staff, time), insufficient research, and the danger of inadvertently exacerbating biases.

Methodological Limitations of Jury Research

Research constraints in legal psychology, including the predominance of US-based studies, heavy reliance on White participant samples, and disparities between individual mock juror and group mock jury designs.