The Influence of Familiarity Recency and Eyewitness Age on Mock Jurors’ Judgement

Mock Jurors’ Perceptions of Eyewitness Evidence: The Role of Familiarity with the Defendant, Race of the Defendant, and Eyewitness Confidence

“…Not surprisingly, the majority of participants (73%, n = 41) voted 'Not Guilty'. Past studies (e.g., Thompson et al, 2019) have found that dichotomous verdicts tend to be a less sensitive measure of guilt than continuous guilt ratings as participants' threshold to move from 'not guilty' to 'guilty' might be quite high. Accordingly, I…”

“…should also be considered. The current study is the second study to find that perceived familiarity between the eyewitness and the defendant influenced mock jurors' legal judgments (see also Thompson et al, 2019).…”

“…Indeed, Vallano et al (2018) collapsed across the familiarity conditions (i.e., seen once, seen many times, seen a few hours ago, seen a few months ago) and found that compared to a stranger identification (i.e., the never seen before condition), the enhanced familiar identification was rated as more accurate and the familiar defendant as more likely to be guilty. Thompson et al (2019) examined how recency of a familiar relationship on its own (i.e., independently of the extent of prior exposure) affects mock jurors' decision-making. A mock trial transcript described the eyewitness and the defendant as former neighbours who knew each other before the defendant moved away one year, five years, or 10 years ago.…”

“…Because of its numerous characteristics, person familiarity lacks an agreed-upon definition in the juror decision-making literature. Although research examining the role of familiarity in mock juror decision-making is very limited, past studies have almost exclusively varied only one aspect of familiarity -magnitude of exposures (e.g., Pozzulo et al, 2014), or quality of a relationship (e.g., Pica et al, 2017), or recency of a familiar relationship (e.g., Thompson et al, 2019). The current study aimed to define familiarity in a more realistic way by using several of its characteristics.…”

“…For instance, researchers have deemed an eyewitness to be 'familiar' with the defendant if they met six times (Pozzulo et al, 2014), eight times (Sheahan et al, 2017), or 'many' times (Vallano et al, 2018) prior to the crime. Others considered 20 interactions (Pica et al, 2018), a former teacher-student relationship (Pica et al, 2017), or a former neighbour relationship (Thompson et al, 2019) as being representative of familiarity. However, it is unclear whether mock jurors perceived these scenarios as familiar.…”