| Contemporary psychological models of juror decision making focus almost exclusively on cognitive variables and depict the juror as a dispassionate decision maker. In contrast, the legal system, as reflected in court decisions, rules of evidence and legal scholarship, assumes that under certain circumstances jurors may be influenced by emotionally charged evidence. Vivid photographs of victims of violence have been assumed to present a significant risk of emotional bias. This study explored some of these underlying assumptions by conceptualizing the act of conviction as a form of aggression, and by generating hypotheses from displacement, and social learning formulations of aggression. From the displacement formulation, it was hypothesized that vivid photographs would serve to induce anger which would be displaced against a criminal defendant through conviction, whether the defendant was actually guilty or not. In contrast, from the social learning formulation of aggression, it was hypothesized that vivid photographic evidence would serve to increase arousal which would make conviction more likely only when conviction was the prepotent response.;To evaluate these formulations, this study required 60 male and 60 female introductory psychology students to read transcripts, review exhibits, and enter written judgments. In a 2 x 3 factorial design, the study varied weight of the testimonial evidence against the defendant (strong vs. weak) and the nature of photographic evidence presented (line drawing, black and white, or color photographs). Written questions about verdicts, weight of the evidence and the appropriate punishment served as dependent measures. Additional measures were incorporated to assess possible effects of emotionally charged evidence on specific juror tasks posited in Pennington and Hastie's (1981) Ideal Juror Model.;Results of a 2 x 3 MANOVA and post-hoc comparisons indicated that the weak evidence transcript induced less certainty of guilt than did the strong evidence transcript, but that the presence of the color photo for the weak evidence/color photograph group heightened subjects' tendency to convict to the point of being statistically indistinguishable from that of subjects in the strong evidence conditions. Implications for both legal and psychological conceptualizations of juror decision making were discussed. Further research was suggested. |
