Social attributions and conversation style in trial testimony.

Abstract

Undergraduates and law students heard either a male or a female witness in a taped reenactment of criminal trial testimony. The testimony was presented either in a "fragmented" style, with brief answers by the witness to many questions by the lawyer, or in a "narrative" style, with long answers to few questions. Consideration of adversary court norms and sex stereotypes led to the prediction that subjects would attribute favorable evaluation of the witness by the lawyer in the female witness -narrative style condition and unfavorable evaluation of the witness by the lawyer in the male witness -fragmented style condition. The prediction with respect to the female witness was confirmed only with law students; the prediction with respect to the male witness was confirmed only with undergraduates. Subjects' own evaluations of the witness showed the same pattern of effects. Implications for social perception and social psychology of law are discussed. Social psychologists in several nations have begun to investigate the role of speech style as a factor affecting the impressions formed of speakers (see Giles & Powesland, 1975, for a review of this research). Early studies on this topic demonstrated that listeners form different impressions of a speaker depending

Does the Narrative Style of Video Evidence Influence Judgements About Rape Complainant Testimony?

“…The two studies that have explored the influence of testimony style on perceptions of witness credibility suggest that the differences between traditional short-answer and narrative testimony style may be negligible. Lind, Erickson, Conley, and O'Barr (1978) tested differences in perceptions of 82 undergraduate students who either listened to an audio recording of a lawyer eliciting testimony from a male or female witness to a robbery using 'fragmented' (average response of eight words) or 'narrative' testimony style (average response of 43 words). Lind et al (1978) hypothesised that, because of courtroom and gender-based norms, students would only expect the lawyer to relinquish control of the testimony to the female witness's testimony if he thought she was trustworthy.…”

What do we really know about witness preparation?

“…Project researchers studied recordings of actual courtroom testimony and designed experiments to assess the impact of different testimony styles on perceptions of witnesses' credibility and persuasiveness. The project produced several publications Erickson, Lind, Johnson, & O'Barr, 1978;Lind, Erickson, Conley, & O'Barr, 1978;O'Barr, 1982;O'Barr & Conley, 1976) and prompted a series of follow-up studies by other researchers (Barry, 1991;Bell, Zahn, & Hopper, 1984;Bradac, Hemphill, & Tardy, 1981;Hosman, 1989;Hosman & Wright, 1987;Hurwitz, Miron, & Johnson, 1992;Johnson & Vinson, 1987;Lisko, 1992;Parkinson, 1981;Parkinson, Geisler, & Pelias, 1983;Pryor & Buchanan, 1984;Wright & Hosman, 1983). Findings from this body of research provide the only direct empirical knowledge about the relation between witnesses' verbal communication styles and jurors' perceptions of their credibility and persuasiveness.…”

“…The study by Lind et al (1978) of narrative and fragmented testimony styles is the only published empirical investigation of this topic. However, the study has been criticized for its assumption that the only feature of narrative testimony is answer length.…”

“…To study the effects of narrative and fragmented testimony styles on jurors' perceptions of credibility, the Law and Language Project researchers identified a prototypical segment of narrative testimony from their original tapes and audiotaped actors (one male and one female) reenacting the testimony (see Lind et al, 1978). They also created a fragmented version of the testimony and audiotaped the same actors enacting this version of the testimony.…”

Unloading the hired gun: Inoculation effects in expert witness testimony

“…Because of this fact, narrative responses are more likely to occur on direct examination whereas fragmented responses occur as the attorney tries to tightly control the flow of information on cross examination. Although the idea of narrative versus fragmented response style has been examined previously with regards to expert witnesses (Lind, Erickson, Conley, & O'Barr, 1978;Barry, 1991), it has not been examined with respect to psychologist expert witnesses or in the context of hired gun testimony.…”