How to promote prospective juror bias disclosure: decrease prehabilitation in questions, increase dissension in answers

How to promote prospective juror bias disclosure: decrease prehabilitation in questions, increase dissension in answers

Psychology

Ripper, Annie

2019-2020

Hamilton, Mykol (Mentor)

Olson, Breanna (Centre Alumni)

English

Typical jury selection questions don't insure impartiality. Hamilton et al. (2015) found that issues in wording cause social desirability pressure, lowering disclosure of anti-defendant bias. For example, I might have some difficulty putting aside pretrial publicity increased disclosure compared to I would be able to. The current experiment replicated the 2015 study and tested a new hypothesis: dissension by others from the self-serving norm of denying bias would “allow” participants to dissent more. 109 college students read a newspaper story and watched a video about a real murder case. We presented false information on percentages of people acknowledging anti-defendant bias, with control, 60%, and 90% conditions. Participants then answered putting aside publicity and presuming innocence questions. Both wording and dissent hypotheses were confirmed. As in the Asch (1951) line study, the 60% and 90% conditions increased disclosure equally. Implications for voir dire questioning are di