Expressed Emotions and Perceived Credibility of Child Mock Victims Disclosing Physical Abuse

Abstract

The influence of emotions displayed by child witnesses during disclosure of abuse on judgments of credibility and guilt were examined. Eight mock police interviews with child actors, telling a story of physical abuse with different emotional expressions, were video-recorded. In a between-group design, jury eligible lay persons (n = 162) and professional child protective service (CPS) workers (n = 154) rated the credibility of the child witnesses and the probability that the alleged perpetrator was guilty of crime. The emotions displayed by the child witnesses strongly affected judgments of credibility and guilt. The patterns of ratings were closely similar in the two participant samples, but the overall ratings of the CPS workers were higher than those of the lay participants. Judgments of the probability of guilt followed a similar pattern with a correlation of .68 between the two variables. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are briefly discussed.

Expectations of Emotions during Testimony: The Role of Communicator and Perceiver Characteristics

“…By contrast, the alleged victims of child physical abuse in Wessel, Magnussen, and Melinder's (2013) study displayed sad, neutral, angry, or positive emotion. However, in that study, the researchers did not measure participants' prior expectations, instead analyzing differences between the participant groups (jury-eligible laypersons vs. child protection workers) in relation to the child witness emotion displayed.…”

“…Future research should investigate whether expectations of emotional displays by child victims of abuse vary when the perceiver has experience with abused children, as would child protection workers. In Wessel et al's (2013) study, child protective service workers' credibility ratings based on emotional display differed from those of non-child protective service workers, possibly due to the former being open to a greater range of emotional displays. Willingness to accept a non-emotion demeanor is influenced by the age of the child victim, as displaying neutral emotion among multiple emotions is more expected of older children.…”

“…These are possibilities that deserve further investigation. In previous studies (Bederian-Gardner et al, 2014;Cooper, 2011;Wessel et al, 2013), mock jurors and child protective services workers rated victim credibility as lower when presented with a neutral victim as compared with a sad victim, which has been posited to mean that when expectations (e.g., child victims should display sad demeanor) are violated, the child victim is less likely to be believed. However, expectations do not seem to be that simple; multiple expectations are held at once, and these expectations vary by communicator and perceiver characteristics.…”

“…Even during courtroom testimony, many children's affect appears neutral or flat (Gray, 1993). Violations of adults' expectations, per EVT's hypothesis, are related to jurors viewing child witnesses as less credible and, in turn, to jurors being less likely to find defendants guilty (Cooper, 2011;Golding, Fryman, Marsil, & Yozwiak, 2003;Wessel, Magnussen, & Melinder, 2013). Prosecutors are also not immune to violations of expectations of child demeanor: Prosecutors are less likely to recommend that a case go to trial when child victims are more withdrawn and less emotional (Castelli & Goodman, 2014).…”

Effects of Child Interview Tactics on Prospective Jurors' Decisions

“…Given these strong associations between mock juror gender and victim credibility perceptions and verdict decisions, we predicted that female mock jurors would perceive alleged CSA victims to be more credible and render more confident guilty verdicts than would male mock jurors. and cognitive abilities tend to impose their negative beliefs on their decision process about the specific child's credibility, and view the child as a less credible and less competent eyewitness (e.g., Wessel, Magnussen, & Melinder, 2013). Likewise, individuals who hold positive opinions about children's eyewitness abilities may view a specific child as more credible and competent.…”