American Journal of Forensic Psychology

The American journal of forensic psychology (Am J Forensic Psychol)

February 21, 2019 – 08:37 am

Forensic Psychology

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ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of pretrial bias (a general tendency to favor the prosecution regardless of the evidence) and conscientiousness (carefulness, thoroughness, and self-discipline) on a juror's involvement in the deliberation process. 118 participants were randomly assigned to one of two evidence strength conditions and they engaged in a computer-mediated deliberation involving scripted interactions with five other jurors. When trial evidence was strong, participation for less conscientious individuals did not vary as a function of bias. However, highly conscientious individuals participated markedly more as bias decreased. It was also shown that when evidence was strong, the highly conscientious and less biased jurors tended to be more active than other jurors in the deliberation. Conscientiousness did not impact participation when evidence strength was weaker, but more bias resulted in less participation. Jurors with higher pretrial bias were also less likely to refer to probative evidence when deliberating. The current findings suggest that greater pretrial bias can undermine both the quality and quantity of participation in a jury deliberation, but conscientiousness can result in more participation when evidence is strong.
The American journal of forensic psychology 01/2015; 33(1):5-24.
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ABSTRACT: The present study examined Criterion-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) in distinguishing between reports of a unique event, an instance of a repeated event, and a fabricated experience. A literature review of both theoretical and empirical research was conducted to critique the use of CBCA in cases where children are recalling instances of repeated events. Based on this review, we hypothesized that CBCA is inconsistent with attributes of recall based on script memory, and thus would under-perform for reports of true instances of a repeated event. A brief study undertaken to test this hypothesis involved 26 8-year-old children who participated in one play session, four similar sessions that varied across encounters, or were coached to fabricate participating in the event. One day after the target event, the children were interviewed...

Source: www.researchgate.net