Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: decision-making
- Creators: Salerno, Jessica M
- Creators: Berry, Megan Cheyenne
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
Description
By providing vignettes with manipulated scientific evidence, this research examined if including more or less scientific detail affected decision-making in regards to the death penalty. Participants were randomly assigned one of the two manipulations (less science and more science) after reading a short scenario introducing the mock capital trial and their role as jury members. Survey respondents were told that a jury had previously found the defendant guilty and they would now deliberate the appropriate punishment. Before being exposed to the manipulation, respondents answered questions pertaining to their prior belief in the death penalty, as well as their level of support of procedural justice and science. These questions provided a baseline to compare to their sentencing decision. Participants were then asked what sentence they would impose \u2014 life in prison or death \u2014 and how the fMRI evidence presented by an expert witness for the defense affected their decision. Both quantitative and qualitative measures were used to identify how the level of scientific detail affected their decision. Our intended predictor variable (level of scientific detail) did not affect juror decision-making. In fact, the qualitative results revealed a variety of interpretations of the scientific evidence used both in favor of death and in favor of life. When looking at what did predict juror decision-making, gender, prior belief in the death penalty, and political ideology all were significant predictors. As in previous literature, the fMRI evidence in our study had mixed results with regards to implementation of the death penalty. This held true in both of our manipulations, showing that despite the level of detail in evidence intended for mitigation, jurors with preconceived notions may still disregard the evidence, and some jurors may even view it is aggravating and thus increase the likelihood of a death sentence for a defendant with such brain abnormalities.
ContributorsBerry, Megan Cheyenne (Author) / Fradella, Hank (Thesis director) / Pardini, Dustin (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
The legal system relies heavily on the contribution of forensic psychologists. These psychologists give opinions on a defendant’s ability to stand trial, their legal sanity at the time of the crime, their future dangerousness, and their competency to be executed. However, we know little about what extrinsic factors bias these experts. I assessed the influence of gruesome photographs on forensic psychologists’ evaluations of competency and legal sanity. Previous research has demonstrated that these photographs influence lay judgments of guilt. I predicted that gruesome color photographs (versus the same photographs in black-and-white or a textual description of the photographs) would influence forensic psychologists to judge the defendant competent and sane (decisions that might ultimately lead to punishment). I also predicted that this effect would be greater for sanity judgments than for competency judgments. I asked laypeople to make the same decisions in order to compare expert and lay judgments. I predicted that impact of photograph type seen in experts would be greater in the lay sample. No differences in judgments of competence, sanity, or mental illness emerged as a function of the type of visual information, for either expert or lay participants. Experts relied on competency evidence to make competency judgments and insanity evidence to make insanity judgments. In contrast, lay people relied on various types of evidence to make their ultimate judgments. This research suggests that people making competency and sanity judgments might not be biased by gruesome photographs.
ContributorsPhalen, Hannah (Author) / Salerno, Jessica M (Thesis advisor) / Saks, Michael J. (Committee member) / Schweitzer, Nicholas J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Biases have been studied in many legal contexts, including sexual assault cases. Sexual assault cases are complex because there are many stages that biases can come into play and have lasting effects on the rest of the case proceedings. One aspect that has not been widely explored is how people perceive institutions’ liability in sexual assault cases based on an obligation to create non-discriminating environments for members and employees according to laws like Title VII and Title IX. The current project focused on how and why cognitive biases affect laypeople’s judgment. Specifically, laypeople’s ability to discern the strength of evidence in civil sexual assault cases against institutions. This was addressed in a series of two studies, with samples collected from Prolific Academic (n = 90) and Arizona State University students (n = 188) for Study 1 (N = 278), and Prolific Academic in Study 2 (N = 449). Both studies used Latin-square design methods, with within and between subject elements, looking at how confirmation bias influenced decisions about whether an institution demonstrated negligence, and thus liability, in the way they responded to sexual assault allegations within their institution. Results from these studies suggest that jurors are overall accurately able to differentiate between weak and strong cases. However, consistent with previous literature, jurors may be susceptible to confirmation bias from outside information (e.g., news stories) and negatively influenced by their personal attitudes (e.g., rape myth acceptance). Given the increased attention of the Me Too movement, these results provide an initial insight into how individuals may be judging these types of cases against institutions.
ContributorsMcCowan, Kristen (Author) / Neal, Tess M.S. (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica M (Committee member) / Davis, Kelly C (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020