NCJ Number
76829
Journal
Journal of Applied Social Psychology Volume: 9 Issue: 6 Dated: (1979) Pages: 548-559
Date Published
1979
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This paper focuses on an experiment which examines both the impact of information about remote social events on judgments of defendants' guilt or innocence in two court cases and the roles of cognitive and affective elements in mediating these judgments.
Abstract
The 50 female subjects were exposed to one of four news stories while ostensibly waiting for an experimental judicial session to begin. They then completed juridic decisions questionnaires which presented two jury cases for judgments, asking subjects to evaluate the guilt or innocence of the defendants. It was hypothesized that social information would be central in influencing the general direction of these judgments, with positive information increasing the tendency toward leniency. It was also hypothesized that positive and negative mood would intensify and attenuate, respectively, the magnitude of the effects produced by this cognitive variable. Results indicated that social information and changes in social outlook caused by the information were of primary importance in altering subjects' judgments about defendants. Subjects who heard positive social information in radio newscasts were more lenient in their judgments of defendants than were those who heard negative social information. Additional findings pertaining to the mediators of this effect suggest that positive mood amplified the impact of social information whatever its direction, while negative mood attenuated it. Five tables, four footnotes, and 21 references are included. (Author abstract modified)