Topic 4- the courtroom

• Dixon- aim


  • to test the hypothesis that a suspect with a Brummie accent will receive a higher rating of guilt than someone with a standard accent
  • to see whether the race of the suspect and/or the type of crime the suspect is accused of would make any difference to the likelihood of them being rated guilty
• Dixon- sample


  • 119 white undergraduate students at university college Worcester
  • they participated as part of their course requirements
• Dixon- procedure

  participants listened to a 2 minute recorded conversation based on a transcript of an interview that took place in a Birmingham police station in 1995, it involved 2 people: a police officer with a standard accent and a male in his 20s as a suspect, either with a Brummie or standard accent

  there were three IVs

  • Brummie or standard accent
  • accused of either armed robbery or cheque fraud
  • white or black suspect

  in all versions of the tape recording, the suspect pleaded his innocence. participants rated the suspect on a 7-point scale from innocent to guilty
• Dixon- results


  • the Brummie-accented suspect was rated higher on guilt that the standard-accented suspect
  • When the suspect had a Brummie accent, was described as being black, and was being accused of the blue-collar crime, he got significantly higher guilt ratings than the other five conditions
• Dixon- conclusions

  • some accents are deemed to sound guiltier than others
• Penrod and Cutler


  • participants were shown one of two videotaped mock trials for a robbery
  • IV=the key female eyewitness who stated in her evidence that she was either 80% confident on her identification of the suspect or 100%
  • participants included students and jurors
  • DV=guilty or not
  • when the eyewitness declared herself 80% confident, he was found guilty 60% of the time
  • when the eyewitness declared herself 100% confident, he was found guilty 67% of the time
  • this was a significant difference, suggesting that the more confident a witness is, the more jurors are likely to be persuaded
• Sigall and Ostrove


  • studies 120 college students and got them to read an account of a crime where the defendant was female and asked to give a sentence for the crime
  • IV= type of crime she was accused of committing- either burglary or swindling
  • the highest mean sentence was for the attractive swindler, and the lowest was for an attractive burglar
• Pennington and Hastie


  evidence can be presented in different orders

  • witness order- this is where lawyers present witnesses in the sequence they believe is most likely to persuade jurors
  • story order- this is where lawyers present evidence in the chronological sequence that events occurred in
  • they found out that if one side used story order while the other side used witness order, the side using story order were much more likely to persuade the jurors their way
• Simons and Chabris


  • on average, there was a sustained inattentional blindness of 46%
  • this can be used to discredit eyewitness testimony by saying the witness did not see something that may help defend a suspect
  • opaque video, easy task, team in a similar colour and less unusual unexpected event all increased the unexpected even being seen