Purpose. The effects of varying post‐event information (information was unchanged from the original event, misleading or added an incorrect detail) on memory for central and peripheral actions and props in a crime scene were examined. Methods. After pre‐testing 105 undergraduates to obtain centrality ratings for target items (actions and props), 300 additional undergraduates were presented with slides of a crime followed by a narrative in which one target item was unchanged from the original presentation, one was changed (misleading), and one had an incorrect detail added. Participants were tested using one of four memory tests: item recognition, source recognition, cued recall or sentence completion (an indirect memory test). Results. Misinformation effects were found for all four dependent measures. People were more resistant to misleading central than peripheral information, and readily accepted incorrect added details in recognition tests, but rarely generated them in recall or sentence completion. Conclusions. Two major conclusions can be drawn. Peripheral items are more strongly influenced by misleading information than are central items, and those who provide a free account of what they witness are unlikely to include details, but may accept incorrect details when questioned. Implications for eyewitness testimony and future research in eyewitness memory are discussed.
The authors investigated the effects of mock juror age (younger vs. older), defendant age (22 vs. 65), and type of excuse defense used by defendants (a highly self-inflicted condition, Cocaine Dependency Disorder, vs. a less self-inflicted condition, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder) on mock juror decisions. Ninety-six younger and 96 older adults read a scenario and answered a questionnaire. Results indicated that the defendant using the highly self-inflicted excuse was more likely to receive a guilty verdict and a longer sentence than was the defendant using the less self-inflicted excuse. Older jurors were more certain of their verdicts and saw the defendant as more responsible for his condition than did younger jurors. Defendant age did not affect juror decisions. In addition, excuse type and juror age affected the jurors' perceptions of the victim's responsibility for the attack. The authors discuss the potential influence of juror age on perceptions of defendant responsibility.
Normative data are presented for the probability of successfully completing 192 single-solution word fragments. Normative data on the familiarity of college students with the solution words are also given, along with estimates of word frequency from existing norms. Regression analyses were performed in order to predict fragment completion difficulty from familiarity, frequency, and several structural characteristics of the fragments. Familiarity, whether or not first and/or last letters appeared in the fragment, and the ratio of letters to missing letters in the fragment were included in the regression equation as significant predictors of difficulty for this fragment set.
Research from both simulated and actual jurors has demonstrated that the defendant's emotional display can influence legal decisions. The purpose of this paper is to review the evidence regarding the influence of the defendant's emotional display, and to consider the potential role of suspect and defendant emotion in wrongful convictions. It is possible that the lack of "appropriate" emotion during questioning or interrogation may lead investigators to create a mind-set that the suspect is the guilty party; as a result, they may be less inclined to investigate other leads. During a trial, the defendant's perceived level of emotion can potentially mislead jurors (e.g. a defendant displaying a low level of emotion leading people to believe, inappropriately, that he is guilty). After a review of the pertinent literature and examples of relevant cases, reasons are provided regarding why one's emotional display may be of limited diagnostic value. Future research ideas are proposed in an effort to determine more definitively the impact of the emotional display of the accused on legal decisions.
Two experiments (N = 443) were conducted to investigate the effects of a defendant's emotion level during testimony on mock jurors' decisions. In Experiment 1, the defendant's level of emotion (low, moderate, high) and mode of presentation (audio, video) were varied. The defendant displaying a low level, as opposed to a higher level of emotion was perccived as more guilty and less credible. In Experiment 2, using only the video mode, emotion level and evidence strength (strong, weak) were varied. Defendant einotion level tended to affect jurors' decisions only when the evidence against the defendant was weak (i.e., a stronger display of emotion was associated with a lower proportion of guilty verdicts, shorter sentence assignments, and perceptions of a more honest defendant). Path analyses for both experiments indicate that the effects of emotion on perceived guilt level are mediated by perceptions of the defendant (e.g., the defendant's level of honesty). Implications of using defendant emotion level for dctermining guilt are discussed. Does a defendant's level of displayed emotion during testimony affect the decisions of jurors? A cursory look at some recent trials suggests that the emotion level displayed by the defendant may influence jurors. For example, in State v. Smart ( I 991/1993), Pamela Smart was charged with coercing her teenage lover and his friends into killing her husband. William Flynn, Smart's lover, testified "between sobs and tears" (Abell, 1991, p. A6) that he killed Smart's husband because she threatened to end their affair if he did not. William Flynn was 'This research was supported in part by two Rider University grants. The authors thank Barry T. Janes and Richard Homan for their help creating the stimuli, and
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