A criminal trial was presented to male and female undergraduates in one of four modes: videotape, audiotape, transcript, or summary. Significant differences in verdicts and in perceptions of the effectiveness of attorneys' presentations were observed across modes, but no differences in perceptions of witnesses were noted.

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An experiment was conducted to test the effects of prior jury service on several aspects of juror functioning. Subjects, inexperienced as mock jurors, read one of two trial transcripts and participated in 9 six-person juries. Several days later, they read a second trial and participated in 18 juries that included new, inexperienced subjects. This assignment-reassignment procedure yielded three groups: inexperienced subjects in homogeneous (i.e., fully inexperienced) juries, inexperienced subjects in heterogeneous juries, and experienced subjects in heterogeneous juries. Overall, there was no support for the hypothesis that prior service produces an individual judgmental bias toward guilt or innocence. However, subjects' experience-relative to that of their fellow jurors-influenced their impact within the group as well as their satisfaction with the trial process. The implications of these results for juror selection and usage procedures are discussed.

Factor analytic (FA), cluster analytic (CA), and multidimensional scaling (MDS) models of implicit personality theory are discussed. A methodological study compared statistically derived dimensions and categories of traits and stimulus persons with subject-generated groups of traits and stimulus persons. Participants rated 10 familiar and 10 unfamiliar people on 20 diverse traits and from these traits and persons formed groups of related traits and groups of similar people. The trait ratings were subjected to factor analysis, cluster analysis, and multidimensional scaling, computed for each subject individually. Comparison of the direct groups with the derived FA and MDS dimensions and CA categories, using four different match indices, indicated that the CA model provided the best match. Results also indicated a tendency toward better matching for traits than persons as well as greater differentiation in cluster space for familiar than unfamiliar persons. It was concluded that when the experimental task requires subjects to categorize rather than dimensionalize stimulus objects, a categorical model such as CA may be more appropriate. Problems associated with testing the complementary hypothesis, that a dimensional model is more appropriate when perceivers dimensionalize, are discussed.

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