SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY IN COURT

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Social Psychology (PSY403)

Lesson 43

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY IN COURT

Aims:

· To understand the use of social psychology theories and principles in court and legal settings

Objectives:

· To discuss the persuasiveness of eyewitness testimony.

· To describe other factors affecting juror's judgments

Section V: Social Psychology Applied

Social Psychology Applied is not a separate section as far as syllabus of social psychology is concerned.

Instead it is based on the theories and principles of social psychology that we have studied so far in

different sections of our syllabus, for example, person perception, attitude formation, persuasion,

interpersonal interactions, and so on. Although knowledge of social psychology can be applied in a variety

of social settings, and fields of human interaction, we will specially discuss two areas where this

knowledge is very effectively applied:

· Social Psychology in Clinics

· Social Psychology in court

Social Psychology in Court

Chapter Summary

This chapter focuses on social psychological aspects of the legal system. The lecture begins with an

examination of research on eyewitness identification. Eyewitness identifications are frequently inaccurate.

Two categories of variables that influence these identifications are estimator variables, which concern the

eyewitness and the situation (for example, viewing conditions, arousal, weapon focus, own-race bias, and

retention interval) and system variables under control of the legal system, for example, suggestive

questioning and lineup procedures. Factors that make for optimal eyewitness identification are identified.

The conditions under which false confessions occur, and under which people may come to believe their

own false confessions, are examined. Other factors that influence juror decision making, including

defendant characteristics (like attractiveness and race), and similarity to jury are reviewed.

Introduction

Several questions interest social psychologists working in court setting, for example, how influential is

eyewitness testimony? How trustworthy are eyewitness recollections? What makes a credible witness?

Such questions fascinate lawyers, judges, and defendants. And they are questions to which social

psychology can suggest answers, as most law schools have recognized when they hire professors of "law

and social science." There is a long list of topics pertinent to both social psychology and law. For example:

· How do a culture's norms and traditions influence its legal decisions?

· What legal procedures strike people as fair? How important are perceptions of the judge's or

mediator's neutrality and honesty?

· How do we, and should we, attribute responsibility of a crime to the defendant?

Studying the legal system helps social psychologists see how behavior occurs in complex, personally

relevant, and emotion-laden contests.

·Two heavily researched sets of factors :

Features of the courtroom drama that can influence jurors' judgments of a defendant

Characteristics of both the jurors and their deliberations.

Although many aspects of court and legal system are of interest to social psychologists, we will be just

discussing two main topics due to shortage of time and space:

o Eyewitness testimony, and

o Other influences on judgment of jury.

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Social Psychology (PSY403)

Eyewitness testimony: Persuasiveness

Several studies have indicated that eyewitness testimony is very persuasive. At the University of

Washington, Elizabeth Loftus (1974, 1979) found that those who had "seen" were indeed believed, even

when their testimony was shown to be useless. When students were presented with a hypothetical robbery-

murder case with circumstantial evidence but no eyewitness testimony, only 18% voted for conviction.

Other students received the same information but with the addition of a single eyewitness and 72% voted

for conviction. For a third group, the defense attorney discredited this testimony (the witness's eye sight

was weak and was not wearing glasses). Did this discrediting reduce the effect of the testimony? In this

case, not much: 68% still voted for conviction.

Later experiments revealed that discrediting may reduce somewhat the number of guilty votes. But unless

contradicted by another eyewitness, a vivid eyewitness account is difficult to erase from jurors' minds. That

helps explain why; compared to criminal cases lacking those that have eyewitness testimony are more

likely to produce convictions.

How accurate are eyewitnesses?

The persuasiveness of eyewitness leads us to a very important question and that is the accuracy of

eyewitness testimony. Is eyewitness testimony, in fact, often inaccurate? Stories abound of innocent people

who have wasted years in prison because of the testimony of eyewitnesses who were sincerely wrong.

More than seven decades ago, Yale law professor Edwin Borchard (1932) documented 65 convictions of

people whose innocence was later proven. Most resulted from mistaken identifications.

To assess the accuracy of eyewitness recollections, we need to learn their overall rates of "hits" and

"misses." One way to gather such information is to stage crimes comparable to those in everyday life and

then solicit eyewitness reports. This has now been done many times, sometimes with disconcerting results.

For example, at the California State University-Hay ward, 141 students witnessed an "assault" on a

professor. Seven weeks later, when Robert Buckhout (1974) asked them to identify the assailant from a

group of six photographs, 60% chose an innocent person. No wonder eyewitnesses to actual crimes

sometimes disagree about what they saw. Later studies have confirmed that eyewitnesses often are more

confident than correct. For example, Brian Born-stein and Douglas Zickafoose (1999) found that students

averaged 74% confident in their later recollections of a classroom visitor, but were only 55% correct.

Factors affecting eyewitness testimony

Stress and Arousal

Stress increases memory for the event itself but decreases memory for what preceded and followed the

incident.

Weapon Focus Effect

People tend to keep their eye on weapons because of their danger and novelty.

This distracts their attention from the robbers.

Own-Race Bias

People are more accurate in identifying members of their own race.

Retention Interval

Accuracy drops with time rapidly at first, then levels off.

Suggestive Questioning

The way witnesses are questioned influences their memories of the event.

Some questions are suggestive but not deliberately misleading

·E.g. Loftus & Palmer (1978) found that people said a car had been going faster in an accident if they asked

about its speed when it "smashed" into the other car as opposed to "hit" it

Other questions are deliberately misleading, asking about nonexistent details.

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· Identification procedures:

Show-ups

ask witnesses to indicate whether or not a single witness is the perpetrator

Simultaneous lineups

Show the witness several potential suspects at the same time.

Sequential lineups

Show potential suspects one at a time; this approach has been proved effective.

Three hypotheses for how post-event information affects memory

over-writing

forgetting

source monitoring

People retain memories of both the event and any post-event information but cannot identify the source of

the memories. Evidence supports this technique.

Reducing Error in eyewitness testimony

Train police interviewers:

When Ronald Fisher and his co-workers (1987) examined tape-recorded interviews of eyewitnesses

conducted by experienced Florida police detectives, they found a typical pattern. Following an open-ended

beginning ("Tell me what you recall"), the detectives would occasionally interrupt with follow-up

questions, including questions eliciting terse answers ("How tall was he?"). Fisher and Edward Geiselman

(1996) and the new guide book say interviews should begin by allowing eyewitnesses to offer their own

unprompted recollections.

The recollections will be most complete if the interviewer jogs the memory by first guiding people to

reconstruct the setting. Have them visualize the scene and what they were thinking and feeling at the time.

Even showing pictures of the setting--of, say, the store checkout lane with a clerk standing where she was

robbed--can promote accurate recall (Cutler & Penrod, 1988). After giving witnesses ample, uninterrupted

time to report everything that comes to mind, the interviewer then jogs their memory with evocative

questions ("Was there anything unusual about the voice? Was there anything unusual about the person's

appearance or clothing?"). In this reference, Ronald Fisher et al. (1987) suggested that allow eyewitnesses

to offer their own unprompted recollections and ask questions. People may be guided to reconstruct the

setting for better recall (Cutler & Penrod, 1988). A statistical summary of 42 studies confirmed that the

"cognitive interview" substantially increase details recalled, with no loss in accuracy (Kohnken et al.,

1999).

Minimize false lineup identification:

Instructions given to eyewitnesses are also important. Identifications are most accurate when the witness is

told that the suspect "may or may not" be in the lineup. Another useful strategy is that give a blank lineup

to the identifiers which contains no suspects, and screens those who make false identifications.

Educate jurors:

· If the facts of a case are compelling, then jury can lay aside their biases and render a fair judgment.

· However, studies conducted in several countries show that jurors discount most of the factors

which are known to influence eyewitness testimony

· A survey of 63 experts on eyewitness testimony lists the most agreed-upon phenomena to help

jurors evaluate the testimony of both prosecution and defense witness:

o Question wording:

An eyewitness's testimony can be affected by how the questions are asked.

o Lineup instructions

o Post-event information:

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Eyewitness testimony is not only affected by what they actually saw but

information they obtained later on.

Accuracy vs. confidence

An eyewitness's confidence may not be a good predictor.

Attitudes and expectation:

Eyewitness's perception and memory of an event may be affected by his

attitudes.

Other influences on Judgments

Physical attractiveness

o We have seen (in chapters of person perception and persuasion) that communicators are more

persuasive if they seem credible and attractive. How jurors and judges make social judgments?

Michael Efran (1974) asked students whether attractiveness should affect presumption of guilt.

The answer was, "No, it shouldn't". But did it? When Efran gave other students a description

of the case with a photograph of either an attractive or an unattractive defendant, they judged

the most attractive as less guilty and recommended that person for the least punishment.

Many experiments and field studies have supported these results.

An example of the real world phenomenon is Chris Downs and Lyons's study (1991). They

asked police escorts to rate the physical attractiveness of 1,742 defendants appearing before 40

judges in misdemeanour cases. The results shown in Figure 1 indicate that the judges set

higher bails and fines for less attractive defendants:

Figure 1: Attractiveness and legal judgments for minor, moderate and serious crimes

Similarity to the jurors

16 0 0

·Jurors are

more sympathetic to a defendant

14 0 0

who shares their attitudes, religion, race, or

gender (Selby et al., 1977)

12 0 0

English speaking people more likely to think

10 0 0

the person not guilty if the defendant's

M ino r

testimony was in English rather than translated

800

M o de ra t e

S e rio us

form Spanish or Thai (Stephen & Stephen,

600

1986).

400

·Similar

prejudice has been reported in

200

psychiatry.

Readings:

· David G. Myers, D. G. (2002). Social

Psychology (7th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Taylor, S.E. (2006). Social Psychology (12th ed.). New York: Prentice Hall.

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