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The goal of this research was to determine whether the size of the incentive (none, small, medium, or large, in terms of sentence reduction) a jailhouse informant receives for testifying, as well as scientific expert testimony regarding the fundamental attribution error, would influence mock juror decision-making in a criminal trial involving a secondary confession. Participants read a murder trial transcript involving informant testimony in which incentive size and expert testimony were manipulated and then provided verdict judgments, made attributions for the informant's decision to testify, and rated the informant and expert on a number of dimensions. Neither expert testimony nor size of incentive had a direct influence on verdicts. However, contrary to previous research on the influence of incentives on jurors' perceptions of secondary confessions, the presence of an incentive did influence verdict decisions, informant ratings, and attributional responses. Results imply that jury-eligible community members may be becoming aware of the issues with informant testimony as a function of incentive but that they are insensitive to the size of the incentive, and expert testimony may not sensitize them to the limitations of such testimony.

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There have been several recent, high-profile cases in the media that have shed light on the perceived leniency in sentencing defendants in sexual assault cases. In a number of these cases, the defendant was well known within their community (e.g., Brock Turner; People v. Turner) or nationally (e.g., Ghomeshi; R v. Ghomeshi). The purpose of this study was to examine how the social status of the defendant (low vs. high), victim social status (low vs. high), victim gender (male vs. female), and the reason the victim was unconscious during the assault (consuming alcohol vs. consuming cold medicine) influenced mock jurors' decisions in a sexual assault case. Mock jurors ( N = 489) read a mock trial transcript depicting an alleged sexual assault. Mock jurors were asked to render a dichotomous verdict, continuous guilt rating, and rate their perceptions of the victim and defendant. There was no influence of the variables on mock jurors' dichotomous verdicts; however, social status influenced guilt ratings. There also was a combined influence of the defendant's social status and the reason the victim was unconscious such that when the defendant was described as low status, and the victim was unconscious due to alcohol consumption, the defendant received higher guilt ratings compared with when the victim was unconscious due to cold medicine. Moreover, the victim was perceived as having more control over the situation when the defendant was the star quarterback (i.e., high status), the victim was female, and she was unconscious due to alcohol consumption compared with cold medicine. These results suggest that victims may be blamed based on their perceived social status and other factors that may have influenced their control over the sexual assault, such as alcohol consumption.

The present study examined whether a modified form of a preidentification confidence rating would provide evidence of a suspect's guilt in addition to the identification decision confidence.Participants (N = 241) viewed a videotaped mock crime and were presented with a target-present or target-absent simultaneous, sequential, elimination, or elimination-plus lineup procedure; both elimination procedures required 2 separate judgments from the witness (i.e., relative and absolute). The elimination-plus procedure was identical to that of the elimination procedure with the addition of the confidence rating in between judgment 1 and judgment 2.Confidence after judgment 1, confidence after judgment 2, and the average of the 2 confidence ratings with the elimination-plus procedure significantly predicted accuracy for choosers. Given that confidence has been recognised by the Supreme Court of the United States, these results shed light on a novel way of utilising confidence in the investigative process. KEYWORDS eyewitness confidence, eyewitness identification, investigative procedure, lineup procedure

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