Psychology and the courtroom

• Stewart conducted his research in Pennsylvania where he asked researchers to rate the attractiveness of defendants in court cases over a 2 year period. He found that defendants rated as more attractive were less likely to be convicted and received more lenient sentences. Twice as likely to avoid jail time.
• Penrod & Cutler conducted research into witness confidence in a series of studies including one where students listened to tape recordings of a trail. Results showed that witnesses that gave a 100% confidence rating gave 67% verdicts compared to 60% guilty verdicts for witnesses who showed 80% confidence. This shows the jury is influenced by the confidence of a witness.
• Seggie conducted research in Australia and investigated the effects on rater's perception of guilt in 3 accents: British RP, broad Australian and Asian. Participants listened to recordings of the accused pleading their innocence and the ppt had to rate their guilt. Not only did he find that accent influenced the responses given by the rater but also the type of crim (blue collar or white collar) More guilt was attributed to the broad Australian accent when the suspect was accused of assault whereas more guilt was attributed to British RP when the suspect was accused of theft.
• Dixon - WW

  • The research investigated the impact of 3 defendant characteristics on guilt attribution: accents, race and type of crime.
  • The sample consisted of 119 white undergraduate psychology students (24 male and 95 female) with a mean age of 25.2 years from the University of Worcester.
• Dixon - How

  • Lab experiment with independent measures - ppts randomly allocated to one of 8 conditions.
  • Study investigated 3 independent variables: brummie vs standard accent; black vs white suspect; blue collar (armed robbery) vs white collar (fraud).
  • More than 95% of people in the pre test were able to recognise the Brummie accent.
  • Ppts listened to a tape recording and rated the suspects guilt on a 7 point scale from innocent to guilty. Also they had to rate the accent they heard on superiority, attractiveness and dynamism.
• Dixon - Findings and conclusions

  • Brummie accent was rater lower on superiority than the standard accent.
  • Brummie accent was rated as more guilty (mean score: 4.27) compared to standard accent (mean score: 3.65)
  • HIghest rating of guilt was for black man, brummie accent, blue collar crime.

  Dixon concludes that attributions of guilt are impacted by accent in an English context; non standard accents are views as more guilty than standard accents; suspects superiority may predict whether they are seen as guilty or not.
• Impression management

  • defendant or witness can be advised to dress and present themselves well. Lawyers will tell their clients to dress formally, be neatly groomed, tone down any non-standard accent and sit up straight. This will mean they will make a good impression on the jury and avoid being stereotyped.
  • This may be because of the halo effect (assign positive characteristics to those who are physically attractive) as researched by Stewart who studied court cases over a 2 year period. Defendants rated as more attractive received more lenient sentences.
• Witness confidence

  • Lawyers should increase witness confidence by using witness familiarisation techniques. This will help to reduce the nerves in their witness by explaining what will happen in court and describing everyone's roles. They can show the witness where they will sit and tell them to tell the truth confidently.
  • Penrod & Cutler found 100% confident -> 67% guilty verdicts compared to 80% confident -> 60% guilty verdicts. This level of confidence reported by the witness clearly influences the jury. The more confident the witness the more the jurors were persuaded.