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- All Subjects: Law
- Creators: Salerno, Jessica
- Creators: Salerno, Jessica M
- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Description
Courthouse dogs (sometimes referred to as facility animals) are expertly trained canines which may be used to assist individuals with psychological, emotional, or physical difficulties in a myriad of courtroom situations. While these animals are increasingly used to assist young witness to court, the jury is still out on whether or not they are prejudicial to the defendant. No known research exists in this area, although research is necessary to determine the possibly prejudicial nature of these animals. Using a mock trial paradigm involving a child sexual abuse case, the current study employed a 2 (Witness type: victim vs. bystander) x 3 (Innovation type: courthouse dog vs. teddy bear vs. none) fully-crossed factorial design. It was hypothesized that witness type and innovation type would interact to differentially impact jurors' judgments about the trial, defendant, and child witness. In addition, it was posited that emotions, such as anger and disgust, would also affect judgments and decision-making. Results indicate that courthouse dogs and comfort toys did impact jurors' decision making in some ways. In addition, emotions and witness credibility predicted sentencing, verdict, and other trial judgments.
ContributorsBurd, Kayla (Author) / Mcquiston, Dawn E (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica M (Committee member) / Schweitzer, Nicholas J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Evaluators of eyewitness evidence (e.g., judges, jurors) often must determine whether an eyewitness’s identification of a police suspect is accurate or mistaken. It has recently been argued that a particular class of variables—suspect-bias variables—pose a unique threat to the reliability of eyewitness identification evidence. Unlike “general impairment” variables that generally impair eyewitness identification accuracy (e.g., poor viewing conditions, biased lineup instructions), suspect-bias variables produce a suspect-specific bias that increases the risk of confident misidentifications of innocent suspects. The goal of this research was to examine evaluators’ sensitivity to suspect-bias variables compared to general impairment variables, and to test whether sensitivity to suspect-bias differs as a function of whether the suspect-bias variable is under the control of the legal system (system suspect-bias) or outside of the legal system’s control (estimator suspect-bias). Participant-evaluators (N = 214) read eight crime vignettes paired with one of four different eyewitness variables (system suspect-bias, estimator suspect-bias, general impairment, or no-variable control) and rated the accuracy of each eyewitness. Evaluators also explained the reasoning for their accuracy rating, and their explanations were coded for mentions of procedural suggestion, eyewitness memory strength, memory contamination, and general eyewitness (un)reliability. Evaluators appear to be more sensitive to general impairment variables than to suspect-bias variables. This finding is alarming, as suspect-bias variables pose a greater threat to eyewitness reliability than general-impairment variables. Implications for the collection and evaluation of eyewitness evidence are discussed.
ContributorsKulak, Kylie (Author) / Smalarz, Laura (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Schweitzer, Nick (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Civil juries are becoming an increasingly rare means of resolving civil disputes. One reason for this is widespread mistrust in jury decision-making do to highly publicized nuclear verdicts where verdicts do not seem to match the alleged harm suffered by a plaintiff. Critics allege that jurors are biased against defendants with deep pockets. This research aims to test whether there is evidence of so-called deep-pocket bias in juror decision-making. Previous research has compared how the wealth of defendants impacts jurors’ verdicts while other studies have compared how jurors’ verdicts are impacted when the defendant is an individual versus a corporation. The first aim is to explore the impact of defendant wealth and corporate identity on jurors’ liability verdicts and damage awards. The second aim is to explore whether the theory of dyadic morality helps to explain any potential observed deep-pocket biases. The study tested the hypothesis that perceptions of a defendant’s moral agency (in other words, their responsibility and intentionality) would predict jurors’ liability verdicts while perceptions of a defendant’s moral patiency (in other words, their vulnerability and capacity for suffering) would predict jurors’ damage awards. In a study of mock juror decision-making, results concluded that when assessing the same alleged wrongdoing and harm, jurors were more confident in a liable verdict against wealthy defendants and corporate defendants compared to poor defendants and individuals as defendants. Higher perceptions of a defendant’s moral agency did explain these effects. However, there was no evidence that defendant wealth or corporate identity influenced damage awards. Ultimately, in cases where plaintiffs portray themselves as a small and vulnerable “David” taking on a large and resourceful “Goliath,” juror decision-making on liability verdicts is likely to unfairly punish “Goliath” defendants, revealing deep-pocket biases against wealthy defendants and corporations.
ContributorsRosales, Breanna Olson (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica (Thesis advisor) / Smalarz, Laura (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
Emotions are an important part of persuasion. Experimental research suggests that White and male jurors can use emotion to increase their influence, while other jurors cannot. This research builds on prior research by examining the relationship between naturally occurring emotion during mock jury deliberations and the influence that jurors hold. Participants (N = 708) in 153 mock juries watched a murder trial video and deliberated on a verdict. Participants self-reported their experienced emotions and rated their perceptions of the other jurors’ emotion and influence. After data was collected, I extracted acoustic indicators of expressed emotion from each deliberation and used a speech emotion recognition model to classify each mock juror’s emotional expression. I hypothesized that there would be an overall effect of emotional expression on influence such that as mock jurors’ emotion increased, their influence would also increase. However, I hypothesized that a juror’s race and gender would moderate the relationship between emotion and influence such that White male jurors will be seen as more influential when they are more emotional, and that female jurors and jurors of color will be seen as less influential when they are more emotional. I also hypothesized that female jurors of color will be doubly penalized for being emotional, due to their “double-minority” status. Bayesian model averaging suggested that the data was most probable under models that included perceived emotion, race, and the interaction between the two, compared to models that did not. Consistent with the hypothesis, as participants were perceived as more emotional, their influence increased. In contrast to the hypotheses, being perceived as more emotional increased influence for both White and non-White mock jurors but the effect was stronger for non-White jurors. In other words, while all jurors benefited from being perceived as more emotional, non-White jurors benefited more than White jurors. Male jurors were more influential than female jurors, and gender did not interact with emotion.. Although being perceived as more emotional predicted increased influence for all participants, this research demonstrates that there are racial and gender disparities in the level of influence that someone might hold on a jury.
ContributorsPhalen, Hannah J (Author) / Salerno, Jessica (Thesis advisor) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Committee member) / Duran, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Prosecutors’ use of dehumanizing language to describe defendants in their opening and closing statements can often go unchecked. This research aims to assess the effect of dehumanizing language on judgments about Black versus White defendants.Past research has demonstrated the effects of dehumanizing language on lay people's perceptions of out-groups, and how those perceptions can lead to consequential behaviors, prejudice, and even retributive violence and conflict. My first aim is to extend this research to the legal context, more specifically, to address a gap in prior research by randomly assigning participants to read the same closing statement in a murder case with
(a) no dehumanizing language, (b) animalistic dehumanizing language, or (c) mechanistic dehumanizing language to describe either (a) White defendants (Studies 1-2) or (b) Black defendants (Study 2). There has been ample investigation into subtle dehumanization and how it interacts with racial groups, but research has yet to investigate how dehumanized descriptions (both animalistic and mechanistic) of a defendant may influence implicit and explicit perceptions of a defendant and legal outcomes with the inclusion of a race manipulation. I tested the impact of dehumanizing language on participants’ impressions of the defendant, their levels of explicit dehumanization of the defendant specifically and implicit dehumanization of Black versus White targets generally, as well as their ultimate sentencing decisions. I predicted that closing statements including dehumanizing language would lead to greater dehumanization of the defendant and greater likelihood of choosing a death sentence—and that this effect would be greater for Black versus White defendants. I also conducted exploratory tests of the relative impact of animalistic versus mechanistic dehumanization. Investigation into the effects of dehumanization of racial and ethnic groups can help identify underlying psychological causes of racial bias and help to facilitate potential preventative measures in the courtroom.
In this paper, I will report the results from a preliminary study testing the impact of dehumanizing language about a White defendant. I will then report the results from a follow-up study testing the impact of dehumanizing language about a White and a Black defendant.
ContributorsBettis, Taylor (Author) / Salerno, Jessica M (Thesis advisor) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Koop, Greg (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
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
Cultivation theory states that consuming television cultivates a social reality in the real world which aligns with the reality present in television. When the television show CSI was released, researchers studied a form of cultivation stemming from the show titled the "CSI Effect." One of the components of the CSI Effect is the tendency of those who watch CSI to be more likely to overestimate the presence of forensic evidence present in a trial and place more trust in such evidence. In recent years, several true crime documentaries that examined controversial cases have been released. In a similar vein of research conducted on CSI, the current study examines true crime documentaries and their possible impacts on viewers’ judgments and beliefs about the criminal justice system. In the current study, participants were provided with a mock case and asked about their perceptions of the case along with their viewership habits. While overall true crime documentary viewership did not influence judgments of evidence manipulation or perceptions of police, findings point to viewership of the targeted documentaries being associated with feelings of mistrust towards the criminal justice system overall, while the lesser-viewed documentaries correlated with judgments of strength and responsibility of the defendant in the case. One possible explanation is that individual characteristics may serve as the driving factor in how individuals choose what to watch when the popularity of the show is not as well-known.
ContributorsDoughty, Kathryn A (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas J. (Thesis advisor) / Neal, Tess (Committee member) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Recent advances in hierarchical or multilevel statistical models and causal inference using the potential outcomes framework hold tremendous promise for mock and real jury research. These advances enable researchers to explore how individual jurors can exert a bottom-up effect on the jury’s verdict and how case-level features can exert a top-down effect on a juror’s perception of the parties at trial. This dissertation explains and then applies these technical advances to a pre-existing mock jury dataset to provide worked examples in an effort to spur the adoption of these techniques. In particular, the paper introduces two new cross-level mediated effects and then describes how to conduct ecological validity tests with these mediated effects. The first cross-level mediated effect, the a1b1 mediated effect, is the juror level mediated effect for a jury level manipulation. The second cross-level mediated effect, the a2bc mediated effect, is the unique contextual effect that being in a jury has on the individual the juror. When a mock jury study includes a deliberation versus non-deliberation manipulation, the a1b1 can be compared for the two conditions, enabling a general test of ecological validity. If deliberating in a group generally influences the individual, then the two indirect effects should be significantly different. The a2bc can also be interpreted as a specific test of how much changes in jury level means of this specific mediator effect juror level decision-making.
ContributorsLovis-McMahon, David (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Saks, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / MacKinnon, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
There is conflicting evidence regarding whether a biasing effect of neuroscientific evidence exists. Early research warned of such bias, but more recent papers dispute such claims, with some suggesting a bias only occurs in situations of relative judgment, but not in situations of absolute judgment. The current studies examined the neuroimage bias within both criminal and civil court case contexts, specifically exploring if a bias is dependent on the context in which the neuroimage evidence is presented (i.e. a single expert vs. opposing experts). In the first experiment 408 participants read a criminal court case summary in which either one expert witness testified (absolute judgment) or two experts testified (relative judgment). The experts presented neurological evidence in the form of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data and the evidence type varied between a brain image and a graph. A neuroimage bias was found, in that jurors who were exposed to two experts were more punitive when the prosecution presented the image and less punitive when the defense did. In the second experiment 240 participants read a summary of a civil court case in which either a single expert witness testified or two experts testified. The experts presented fMRI data to support or refute a claim of chronic pain and the evidence type again varied between image and graph. The expected neuroimage bias was not found, in that jurors were more likely to find in favor of the plaintiff when either side proffered the image, but more likely to find for the defense when only graphs were offered by the experts. These findings suggest that the introduction of neuroimages as evidence may affect jurors punitiveness in criminal cases, as well as liability decisions in civil cases and overall serves to illustrate that the influence of neuroscientific information on legal decision makers is more complex than originally thought.
ContributorsHafdahl, Riquel J (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Neal, Tess (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This study investigates the presence of a dual identity defendant, and how sharing an in-group can create a judgment bias. A sample of 256 participants was used to test whether there was a relationship between judgment punitiveness, perceptions of shared identity, hypocrisy and the social identities (religion and sexual orientation) of the participants and a defendant charges with a sexual offence. Results suggest that Christian participants selected more punitive outcomes for the defendant compared to non-Christian participants. Further, participants were more punitive when the defendant was gay compared to when the defendant was heterosexual. Also, when the defendant was straight there was a stronger feeling of similarity between the participants and defendant compared to when the defendant was gay, and non-Christian participants had a stronger feeling of closeness to the defendant compared to Christian participants. There was a significant interaction found, suggesting that when the defendant was Christian and gay he was seen as more hypocritical compared to when he was Christian and straight; there was no interaction when the defendant was not Christian. These findings should aid in future research and a better understanding of how dual identity defendants are perceived in the courtroom.
ContributorsAltholz, Rachel Leah (Author) / Salerno, Jessica (Thesis advisor) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Schweitzer, Nick (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014