| Nullification occurs when a jury acquits a defendant who is technically guilty of violating the letter of the law, but whose actions do not violate the spirit of the law. Nullification is likely to occur during euthanasia trials, for example. The present studies examine nullification from a social-cognitive perspective by applying Epstein's (1985) Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory (CEST) to nullification behavior. CEST posits two qualitatively different modes of processing information: the experiential mode and the rational mode. The experiential mode is an automatic process that is associationistic, prone to stereotypical thinking, and closely tied to affect. The rational mode, on the other hand, is effortful, analytic, reason-oriented and relatively void of affect. It was hypothesized that nullification would be more likely to occur when participants processed experientially, rather than rationally. To test this prediction, in Study One, participants listened to an audiotaped criminal trial involving a sympathetic defendant, rendered a verdict, and then completed the Rational-Experiential Inventory, which is a measure of baseline processing mode. In Study Two, participants were implicitly manipulated to process rationally or experientially before listening to the trial. Study Two also varied the judicial instructions given to participants. Participants received standard New York instructions, Maryland instructions, or radical nullification instructions. The New York instructions do not make reference to nullification, while the Maryland and radical nullification instructions inform jurors that they have the power to nullify. It was predicted that participants manipulated to process experientially would exhibit a tendency to nullify regardless of judicial instructions condition. Participants manipulated to process rationally, however, were expected to nullify only when given the radical nullification instructions. These predictions are based upon Horowitz's (1985) research, which show that, while Maryland instructions do not affect verdicts, radical instructions can result in more lenient verdicts. Results of Studies One and Two do not support the overall prediction that nullification is more likely to be the product of an experiential mode of processing information. Furthermore, the results of Study Two indicate that, contrary to predictions, radical nullification instructions tend to erase the effects of processing mode. |
