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Understanding Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Toward Prosecutors and Defense Attorneys

Abstract

Research consistently finds that jurors bring preexisting attitudes and opinions, which can influence trial outcomes, into the courtroom. However, the process of jury selection (voir dire) remains largely unchanged. This research seeks to understand if juror decision-making is influenced by implicit perceptions of legal actor trustworthiness. Participants were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk online platform and were randomly assigned to read a summarized trial scenario. Participants rendered a guilty or not guilty verdict and reported their perceptions of the prosecutors and defense attorneys from the trial scenarios. Two of the three trials differed according to presentation of “compromising” evidence by either the prosecution or defense, with the third serving as a control condition. Additionally, to establish if participants had trustworthy or untrustworthy implicit attitudes toward prosecutors or defense attorneys, participants completed an Implicit Association Test (IAT). Participants then reported explicit attitudes and opinions about the role of prosecutors and defense attorneys in society, in addition to providing their demographic information and criminal legal system attitudes. Results indicate that explicit biases and certain demographic variables are strongly associated with verdicts in trial scenarios, as compared to implicit biases. However, in particularly ambiguous cases, implicit biases of legal actor trustworthiness appear to inform verdicts. These results suggest that reliance on explicit attitudes and demographic characteristics during voir dire may not be adequate predictors of individual juror outcomes in cases in which the evidence for both the prosecution and defense is particularly ambiguous.

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