Effects of Attractiveness, Strength of Evidence, Severity of Crime, and Questionable Evidence on Decisions in a Simulated Jury Trial

• NCJ Number: 72940
• Author(s): D S Pravica
• Date Published: 1977
• Length: 37 pages
• Sale Source: UMI Dissertation Services
• Publication Type: Thesis/Dissertation
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: California State University, Fullerton - doctoral thesis

Annotation

The effects of defendant attractiveness, severity of crime, strength of evidence, and admissibility of evidence on simulated jurors' decisions were investigated.

Abstract

Subjects were 192 upper division psychology students enrolled in college level abnormal psychology classes (66 males, 126 females). They were given a booklet containing a descriptive summary of a crime and trial in which the defendant was either attractive or unattractive, and the crime was either a robbery or a robbery/murder. In addition, the evidence presented was either weak or strong, and a final point of controversial evidence was ruled either admissible or inadmissible. A control group did not receive the controversial evidence. It was hypothesized that this evidence would be disregarded only when the defendant is attractive to the juror. This hypothesis was not supported, however, as no interaction between defendant attractiveness and questionable evidence was found. Moreover, it appeared that jurors were actively suppressing a possible bias in favor of the attractive defendant in making judgments that primarily took into account the nature of the evidence and the crime. Results for guilt and sentencing indicated that defendants are more likely to be found guilty when evidence is strong and that longer sentences were given for a murder than a robbery. The finding that additional evidence, whether admissible or not, does influence the jurors' decision replicates the findings of Sue et al. (1973). Subjects used the additional evidence and ignored the judge who ruled such evidence inadmissible. A task for future research is to determine why the inadmissible evidence influenced juror decisionmaking. One possibility is that subjects believe so strongly in veracity/reliability of phone tap evidence (the additional evidence submitted) that such evidence is almost impossible to ignore. Perhaps other types of inadmissible evidence would be more easily ignored by subjects. Tabular data and six references are appended. (Author abstract modified)