Another example is that of Jones and Harris (1967), where students were asked to recite an essay which was not theirs regarding the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba. Although the audience were explicitly told that the opinions held in the essays were not that of the students, the students reading out the essays were still assumed to have held those opinions.
Milgram’s obedience experiment showed how easily people can fall into the trap of the fundamental attribution error. However it was an experiment where the variables were controlled by Milgram, and it would be different from a real life situation where the variables are diverse and not controllable.
When a juror is making a decision there are numerous occasions when the fundamental attribution error can happen, where they attribute a criminals disposition without considering any situational factors. From the Jones and Harris experiment we could see that despite giving the warning to the audience they still managed to commit the fundamental attribution error. It shows how strongly it is embedded in the mind of people. It then makes us ask, would it not be more likely that the fundamental attribution error would easily be committed when the audience was not given the warning? Jurors are usually not given the past records of criminals standing in trials, but even so this experiment shows us that it might be possible that they may attribute a person standing trial to their disposition rather than looking at the situation.
The just world hypothesis shows that there is a belief in a world that is just and fair and that people reap what they sow. Hence when gruesome events such as murder and rape occur, they try to destroy the foundation of a just world. Instead of giving up the belief in a just world, people then find reasons to get around and still stick to believing in a just world.
The study by Bell et all. (1994) is an example that can illustrate this hypothesis. In a mock jury situation, male and female students looked at four occurrences of rape. Two involved rape by a stranger and the other two were rape by a known person. The results were that both genders placed more responsibility on the victim when she was raped by a known person.
One drawback about this study is that it was done in a simulated jury situation. Thus the decisions being made by the students would not have any far reaching consequences. Secondly, since the participants were all students, it does not reflect the opinion of the general jury-eligible population.
Hedonistic relevance is a principle which states that the magnitude of pain or pleasure caused by an action, has an effect on whether someone would attribute it to dispositional factors rather than situational ones. Hence the degree of seriousness in the consequences of the action becomes of more importance than the act itself.
This principle was researched by Walster (1966) who asked participants how responsible a car owner was when the brake cable on the hand brake was rusted and broken and the car had rolled down a hill as result. Participants were asked about the responsibility of the car owner according to various alterations to the situation, such as if someone was injured as a result of the car rolling down the hill as opposed to if someone was not etc. In accordance with the theory, most people placed a higher level of responsibility on the car owner if someone was injured i.e if the consequences had more serious implications.
This study however, has been criticised because it has utilized the word ‘responsible’ in a very vague manner. The nature of the word ‘responsible’ when applied to this particular context is subjective, and different people would interpret the meaning of ‘responsible’ in various ways. They may view responsible easily by just implying that their actions were a direct cause of the accident whereas others may say a person is responsible only if they could have had the foresight to see what might have happened as a result of not taking the necessary precautions. It can be concluded from this study that it is far too simple to be contrasted to the decision making process in the courtroom with regards to juries.
Also, the approach of defining the word ‘responsibility’ in law is such that it is based on the notion of judging situations objectively, and with regards to what is reasonable, and would be thought of by an average person with common sense. Therefore it can be seen that although Psychological research allows us to understand some concepts behind the causes of jury decision making, it also has its limitations.
Jurors formulate a story based on the information presented during the trial. This is known as the story model for jurors’ decision making, established by Pennington and Hastie (1993). It consists of three stages. First they come up with a story based on the evidence and relevant personal knowledge and experience. They then learn the verdict categories that would be appropriate for the case, and finally try to match the story and the verdict categories to come up with a decision that would be fitting.
Pennington and Hastie have successfully conducted extensive research on this theory through the use of mock juries(eg Pennington & Hastie, 1986), where the jurors’ deliberations are observed, and hence have accumulated enough evidence to support their theory, taking us to new levels of understanding jury deliberation.
However, the use of mock juries would present one problem in that the situations given to mock juries would be brief and would not involve the complexity that is usually present in a real trial. Therefore mock juries would have an easier job not having to evaluate evidence, witness testimonies and attempts by the defence and prosecution to sway them to either side.
Once the trial has finished, the jurors must then collaborate on reaching either a unanimous or majority verdict, depending on the type of trial. At this stage the interpersonal influences on jury decision making come into play.
Conforming to the influence of the thoughts of the majority in the jury is one such factor that has a large contribution towards the verdict. Smith and Mackie (1995) have established that the opinions of the majority win because they are expressed frequently, analysed more and are persuasive.
Conformity is defined by Reber (1985) as “the tendency to allow one’s opinions attitudes, actions and perceptions to be affected by the prevailing opinions, attitudes, actions and perceptions”, and social influence is defined as the process by which an individual’s opinions are changed by that of others. It was further split into two categories by Deutch & Gerrard (1955), namely normative and informational social influence. Normative social influence is based on our desire to be accepted, while informational social influence is based on our desire to be correct.
A study by Asch (1955) shows how strong the influence of the majority’s opinion can be. A series of trials with a group of 7-9 males consisting of only one true participant and the rest being confederates were asked to compare the lengths of lines. There was a single vertical line on one card. On the other card, there were three more lines with one line being identical and the rest of different length and students were made to choose the right one. The confederates were made to give the incorrect answers on certain trials. 75% of the participants in the study conformed to the majority. The reasons that were cited for complying coincided with the theories of normative and informational social influence. For example some participants stated not wanting to spoil the results as a reason. This showed normative social influence, where they have complied but secretly maintained their private belief.
Asch’s experiment showed that people were willing to deny what they were seeing in their own eyes in order to follow what the majority thought. However the nature of this task is simple compared to that of the deliberations of juries where they would have to discuss their decisions instead of giving one word answers, and hence would make an effort to try and defend their opinions. Therefore the study lacked ecological validity.
Asch’s study has been replicated successfully by other experimenters such as Crutchfield, but it is also worthy to note that there have been unsuccessful attempts at the experiment. It was repeated by Perrin and Spencer (1981) using UK science students and the rate of conformity was only 1 in 396 trials. Another similar authority is Larsen (1974), which was conducted in the USA. The difference in the results of these experiments creates a grey area in the subject. It reinforces the fact that experiments are just experiments and may not always translate to the real world, and in turn affects our reliance on these studies with relation to conformity within jury deliberation.
Due to the fact that the study of actual jury deliberation is prohibited, we would always have to rely on instruments such as experiments and surveys to help us understand the decision making process of juries. Although there have been significant advances in the field, there is research that has failed to do so because of their ambiguity and subjectivity.