Racial Bias in Decisions Made by Mock Jurors Evaluating a Case of Sexual Harassment

Abstract

White (N = 161) and Black (N = 152) college students served as mock jurors in a simulated civil case in which a female plaintiff accused a male defendant of sexual harassment. The authors experimentally manipulated the race (Black or White) of the litigants and asked the mock jurors to decide whether the defendant was guilty; to rate the certainty of their belief in the defendant's guilt; and, when they judged the defendant guilty, to recommend an award to the plaintiff. Mock jurors of both races tended to favor litigants of their own race and their own gender. Racial bias was highest among White male jurors and lowest among White female jurors.

Juror Perceptions in Sexual Orientation-Based Hate Crimes

“…Further research has seen similar support for the similarity-leniency hypothesis in race-salient and non-race-salient trials, such that Black jurors rated Black defendants as less aggressive and less likely to be guilty than did White jurors (Abwender & Hough, 2001;Sommors & Ellsworth, 2000;Wuensch, Campbell, Kesler, & Moore, 2002). These findings suggest jurors in hate crime trials may also be more lenient toward defendants they consider to be similar to themselves.…”

“…In the current context, it is important to examine ingroup/outgroup theories as they can play a critical role in jury decision-making, particularly when examining how jurors may categorize the defendants or victims involved in a trial (Taylor & Hosch, 2004). Two predominant theories have emerged that attempt to explain how these ingroup/outgroup mechanisms apply in the context of jury decision-making: (1) similarity-leniency hypothesis and Many juror decision-making studies have looked at the first of these theories, similarityleniency hypothesis, which proposes that jurors are more lenient toward defendants who are similar to themselves, rather than dissimilar (Abwender & Hough, 2001;Kerr, Hymes, Anderson, & Weathers, 1995;Sommors & Ellsworth, 2000;Van Proojien, 2006;Wuensch, Campbell, Kesler, & Moore, 2002). Kerr and colleagues (1995) found that when there was not overwhelming evidence of a defendant"s guilt, mock jurors were more lenient toward defendants who practiced the same religion, as compared to defendants who practiced another religion.…”

“…According to the similarity-leniency hypothesis (Kerr, Hymes, Anderson, & Weathers, 1995;Abwender & Hough, 2001;Sommors & Ellsworth, 2000;Van Proojien, 2006;Wuensch, Campbell, Kesler, & Moore, 2002) differences should have been observed based on the participants" potential perceived similarity to the heterosexual victim (as the far majority of participants were heterosexual), such that higher punishments would be given to the perpetrator when the victim was heterosexual.…”

Status, emotional displays, and the relationally-based evaluation of criminals and their behavior

“…Previous literature suggests that an individual's race and gender may influence their evaluations of criminals and their behaviors, particularly with regard to sentencing (Dane and Wrightsman 1982;Egbert et al 1992;Moore et al 1994;Wuensch et al 2002). In addition, how serious an individual believes a crime to be affects several of their reactions to that crime 14 In order to be deemed significant, a factor had to have an eigenvalue greater than one and explain more than 20 percent of the variance.…”

Probability Discounting of Legal and non-Legal Scenarios: Discounting Varies as a Function of the Outcome, the Recipient’s Race, and the Discounter’s Sex

“…However, shallow rates of discounting might also represent a greater willingness for the African American recipient to experience the full outcome. Future research will be needed to parse these possibilities, but the existing literature (see Hughes & Tuch, 2003;Murrell et al, 1994;Wuensch, Campbell, Kesler, & Moore, 2002) would suggest that the last of them is perhaps the most likely explanation.…”