Studying Perceptions of Juror Influence In Vivo: A Social Relations Analysis

• NCJ Number: 183263
• Journal: Law and Human Behavior Volume: 24 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2000 Pages: 173-186
• Author(s): David K. Marcus; Phillip M. Lyons Jr.; Michelle R. Guyton
• Date Published: April 2000
• Length: 14 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Sam Houston State University
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study used Kenny's (1994) social relations model to examine jurors' perceptions of social influence in the jury.

Abstract

From a statistical and methodological perspective, the social relations model (SRM) perceives the jury as a "round-robin," in which each juror may influence and be influenced by each of the other jurors. In such situations, the resultant influence may depend both on those who provide the influence and on those who receive it; i.e., influence emerges from the interactions of providers and targets who are interdependent and who may reciprocally influence each other. The SRM is a variance partitioning technique that decomposes the variance in interpersonal judgments into its basic component: target, perceiver, and relationship. "Round-robin data are organized into a matrix, with the participants as perceivers in the rows of the matrix and the participants as targets in the columns. The current study examined actual jurors' perceptions of interpersonal influence. By applying SRM to juror reports, a number of questions about social influence were addressed, many of which were inaccessible to earlier researchers. The two most basic questions derived from the variance partitioning performed by the SRM were as follows: "Do jurors generally agree about how influential the members of the jury were (i.e., target variance)?" and "Do some jurors report having been influenced more than others (i.e., perceiver variance)?" After rendering a verdict in criminal or civil court cases, jurors rated how influential each member of the jury had been and provided self-reports of their personality traits. Perceptions of influence in the jury were mostly in the eye of the beholder, with jurors high in "Conscientiousness" and low in "Openness" being most likely to report that they were personally influenced by other jurors. There were small but statistically significant levels of consensus in the ratings of how influential the jurors were. To the extent that they did agree, jurors rated extraverted, tall men as most influential. 6 tables and 29 references