Juror Decision Making Essay

Words: 670
Pages: 3

Previous research indicates that there are many different sources of information that can sway the judiciary decision for trials. An increasing amount of photographic evidence used during the jury period has been argued to be inflammatory and prejudicial by legal counsels (Ahola, Hellstrom, & Christianson, 2010). Exposure to photographic evidence has a direct influence on the outcome of criminal trials due to its affect on witnesses and jurors. Models of juror decision-making suggest a mechanism for this effect based on two decisions that decide the verdict: 1. probability of commission, a subjective likelihood from a priori beliefs and evidence that the defendant committed acts in question and 2. reasonable doubt, or a level of certainty needed for sure conviction (Ahola et al., 2010). Vivid information is more apt to storage and memory retrieval than non-vivid information. People judge the frequency or relative likelihood of a given class of events according to the …show more content…
Here, the participants were also given an additional component of being presented with a facial photo of the defendant. The determining factor was the gender of the perpetrator photographed, as well as their ratings of attractiveness. This varied in conditions where the woman in the photo had short hair with no makeup and a second condition where the woman appeared with long hair and makeup, associated with a higher rating of attractiveness. For the males, the first image had short hair and no beard, and the second image had long hair with a beard, with a lower attractive rating. The participants were to perform the same judgments as in Experiment 1, in addition to sentencing the defendant by evaluating their respective role in the judicial process (Ahola et al.,