I. INTRODUCTIONSeveral authors surveying literature pertinent to the area of psychosurgery (g, 10, 11, 13, 18, 22) have generally concurred in three principal conclusions: first, that there is disagreement among experimenters regarding the effect which prefrontal lobotomy has on those functions which psychological tests are designed to measure; second, that certain important psychological variables have been neglected in the various studies; and third, that there is considerable discrepancy between interpretations of test data and clinical impression. The present writers, as a result of their own review of the experimental literature, wish to add a fourth criticism. It is apparent that several investigators have failed to consider basic methodological issues in evolving their experimental procedures. The
This study examined whether manipulating power-of-speech within eyewitness testimony (EWT) and the type of scientific evidence (deoxyribonucleic acid [DNA] or fingerprint) had an effect on mock-juror decision-making. A between-participants design was utilised with jury-eligible participants randomly assigned to one of eight online experimental conditions. Participants were presented with a scenario followed by one type of scientific evidence and EWT. After each piece of evidence, participants made judgements of the probability of defendant guilt, judgement confidence and evidence strength. Lastly, participants chose a verdict and, if applicable, a sentence length. It was found that although powerful EWT was rated as more indicative of guilt (and indeed stronger than powerless EWT), only scientific evidence type affected the final verdicts with DNA evidence being associated with a greater number of guilty verdicts. Results suggest a biasing effect of DNA that outweighs the effect of other types of evidence including EWT.
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