During voir dire, judges frequently attempt to "rehabilitate" venirepersons who express an inability to be impartial. Venirepersons who agree to ignore their biases and base their verdict on the evidence and the law are eligible for jury service. In Experiment 1, biased and unbiased mock jurors participated in either a standard or rehabilitative voir dire conducted by a judge and watched a trial video. Rehabilitation influenced insanity defense attitudes and perceptions of the defendant's mental state, and decreased scaled guilt judgments compared to standard questioning. Although rehabilitation is intended to correct for partiality among biased jurors, rehabilitation similarly influenced biased and unbiased jurors. Experiment 2 found that watching rehabilitation did not influence jurors' perceptions of the judge's personal beliefs about the case.

Rationale Indirect acting serotonin (5-HT) receptor agonists (e.g., selective 5-HT reuptake inhibitors [SSRI]) stimulate multiple 5-HT receptors, although the role of particular receptors as well as interaction(s) among different receptors in the therapeutic effects of SSRIs is not fully understood. Objectives Relatively few studies have systematically examined direct-acting agonists in combination. This study examined the 5-HT1A receptor agonists 8-hydroxy-2-(di-n-propylamino tetralin hydrochloride (8-OH-DPAT; 0.01–10.0 mg/kg) and 3-chloro-4-fluorophenyl-4-fluoro-4-([(5-methyl-6-methylamino-pyridin-2-ylmethyl)-amino]-methyl)-piperidin-1-yl-methanone (F13714; 0.01–1.0 mg/kg) and the 5-HT2A receptor agonists 1-(2,5-dimethoxy-4-methylphenyl)-2-aminopropane (DOM; 0.32–10.0 mg/kg) and dipropyltryptamine (DPT; 1.0–32.0 mg/kg), alone and in combination, in rats responding under a fixed ratio schedule of food presentation. Results When administered alone, each drug decreased the rate of responding in a dose-related manner with the potency order being F13714 > 8-OH-DPAT > DOM > DPT. WAY100635 (5-HT1A receptor antagonist; 0.01–0.1 mg/kg) attenuated the rate-decreasing effects of 8-OH-DPAT and F13714 while MDL100907 (5-HT2A receptor antagonist; 0.01–0.1 mg/kg) attenuated the rate-decreasing effects of DOM and DPT. Dose addition analysis showed that the interaction between 8-OH-DPAT and F13714, as well as the interaction between DOM and DPT, was additive. In contrast, the interaction between 8-OH-DPAT and DOM, as well as the interaction between F13714 and DOM, was infra-additive. Conclusions This study shows that, for some dose combinations, agonist actions at one 5-HT receptor subtype attenuate agonist actions at another 5-HT receptor subtype; thus, the combined neuropharmacological actions and therapeutic effects of indirect-acting agonists are not likely to be adequately characterized by examining in isolation activity at particular 5-HT receptor subtypes.

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