Evaluating and Sentencing a Defendant as a Function of His Salience and the Perceiver's Set

• NCJ Number: 75973
• Journal: Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin Volume: 5 Issue: 1 Dated: (January 1979) Pages: 48-52
• Author(s): S V Eisen; L Z McArthur
• Date Published: 1979
• Length: 5 pages
• Grant Number(s): R01-MH-26621
• Sponsoring Agency: US Dept of Health, Education, and Welfare
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study was designed to investigate the joint influence on impression formation of a perceiver's set and a stimulus person's salience by use of a videotaped mock trial.

Abstract

Sixty-four introductory psychology students, composed of an equal number of males and females, were randomly assigned to one of two set conditions (trial, impression) and one of two salience conditions (environment, defendant). All subjects were asked to view one of two 20-minute videotapes of a mock criminal trial. In the environment salient condition, the defendant appeared for 5 minutes, the victim for 5 minutes, and the lawyers for 10 minutes. In the defendant salient condition, the defendant appeared for 10 minutes, the victim for 5 minutes, and the two lawyers for 5 minutes. Trial set subjects were told experimenters were interested in the judicial decisionmaking process, and impression set subjects were told experimenters were interested in the process of impression formation. All subjects gave a verdict, recommended a sentence, rated the extent to which the victim and the defendant had set the tone of the interaction on the night of the crime, and rated the extent to which each had been responsible for the stabbing. Findings showed that cognitive set influenced the range and the direction of salience effects. The defendant was seen as more responsible for the crime by perceivers who were set to watch a trial and determine his guilt than by those who were set to watch a social interaction and to form an impression of him. Given a trial set, the more visibly salient the defendant, the more negatively he was evaluated. However, the defendant's salience did not influence the recommended sentence. Given an impression set, the more visibly salient the defendant, the more positively he was evaluated, and the more lenient the recommended sentence. Eight references are provided.