Town vs. gown: A direct comparison of community residents and student mock jurors

Abstract

The use of students as mock jurors in the majority of legal psychology studies on jury behavior has been criticized (e.g., Bray & Kerr, 1979; Diamond, 1997). This study examined the degree to which student mock jurors' decisions were generalizable to those of real jurors. The participants of the study included 297 jury-eligible university students and 297 volunteers from the venire in the same community as that in which the students resided. All participants viewed one of six versions of a videotaped criminal trial. The defendant testified in English or in Spanish. In addition, the race of defendant was varied. Three bilingual individuals served as defendants with one appearing to be of northern European origin, one of Latino background, and one of African origin. Dependent variables included verdict and, for those who found the defendant guilty, the number of years to which he should be sentenced, and whether he should be fined. Student mock jurors differed reliably from their community counterparts on several demographic characteristics. However, the two groups had mixed results in relation to decision-making tasks. There was no difference in individual verdict preferences, but the students' sentence recommendations were more punitive. These results are interpreted in the context of the generalizability of mock juror studies.

The Verifiability Approach to detection of malingered physical symptoms

“…parents, boyfriend, flatmate) (see also Culhane et al, 2008). Actually, mentioning close people as witnesses is a clever strategy because the majority of people are willing to corroborate a statement of a close friend or relative in order to help that person (Hosch, Culhane, Tubb, & Granillo, 2011). It may well be the case that this strategy works better in a malingering context than in a criminal/insurance setting.…”

Mock Jury Research: Where Do We Go from Here?

“…The problem for our science is determining the limits to generalizability so that we can distinguish situations in which students will suffice and when they will not. For example, Hosch, Culhane, Tubb, and Granillo () in our seventh paper presented a videotaped criminal trial re‐enactment to samples of jury‐eligible university students and volunteers from the venire in the same community. The substantive factors of interest were the language in which the defendant testified (English or Spanish) and the race of the defendant (Northern European, Latino, and African American).…”

Medication state at the time of the offense: Medication noncompliance, insight and criminal responsibility

“…While college students can certainly serve on a jury, the fact that this demographic constituted the entire sample is a limitation to generalizability. Although mock jury research traditionally has permitted use of such samples (i.e., Bornstein, ) and scholars have argued that their use is no more problematic than other variables that hinder generalizability (e.g., jurisdiction, region, type of trial; Devine, ), other research has questioned this traditionally permissive stance (Hosch, Culhane, Tubb, & Granillo, ; Keller & Wiener, ). Nevertheless, the researchers considered the use of this sample as an acceptable tradeoff for initial research in this area given the inclusion of other advances in construct and ecological validity, such a real‐life insanity case and the use of deliberations (Devine, ; Wiener, Krauss, & Lieberman, ).…”