306 posts · 188,869 views
Social science research, current events & jury news all viewed through the lens of litigation advocacy with an emphasis on persuasion, bias, communication, and all phases of case preparation.
Rita Handrich
3 posts
Doug Keene
153 posts
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- April 30, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 569 views
An update on disrupting suspicion of atheists
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
We’ve written a number of times about atheists in the courtroom and the general lack of trust in atheists in this country. One recent study pointed out we trust atheists about as much as we trust rapists! Identifying biases that are deep-seated and seem to be permanent is one of the things we do as trial consultants. [...]
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Everyone knows you just can’t trust an atheist!
You’re on trial: Is it better to be an atheist or a black radical Muslim lesbian?
Neurolaw Update: Who........ Read more »
Gervais WM, & Norenzayan A. (2012) Reminders of Secular Authority Reduce Believers' Distrust of Atheists. Psychological Science. PMID: 22477103
- April 27, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 384 views
“I punish you because you harmed him!”
by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room
Humans appear to be the only species who are willing to punish others who lie, cheat, steal or violate social norms even when they [the punisher] was personally unharmed or don’t stand to directly benefit from punishing the wrong-doer. The practice is called “third-party punishment”. Ironically, punishment itself is thought to have a foundational role [...]
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Buckholtz, J., & Marois, R. (2012) The roots of modern justice: cognitive and neural foundations of social norms and their enforcement. Nature Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1038/nn.3087
Yamada M, Camerer CF, Fujie S, Kato M, Matsuda T, Takano H, Ito H, Suhara T, & Takahashi H. (2012) Neural circuits in the brain that are activated when mitigating criminal sentences. Nature Communications, 759. PMID: 22453832
- April 25, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 415 views
Everyday racism at work: Hope for African American Women?
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
Black women are expected to behave like white men when they have reached a higher level of leadership. That is the conclusion of new research looking at black women leaders. Traditionally, white men are expected to be assertive and even aggressive leaders, but black men and white women are often perceived negatively for those sorts [...]
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Livingston, R., Rosette, A., & Washington, E. (2012) Can an Agentic Black Woman Get Ahead? The Impact of Race and Interpersonal Dominance on Perceptions of Female Leaders. Psychological Science, 23(4), 354-358. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611428079
- April 23, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 466 views
Everyday racism: A comparison of African American and Asian American Women
by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room
There’s some intriguing new research out looking at how members of different cultures respond to overt racism. Think of your stereotypes of African American women and Asian women. Now, think of which group you would predict would respond directly to racism and which group you would predict would be more likely to respond indirectly. If [...]
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Lee, EA, Soto, JA, Swim, JK, & Bernstein, MJ. (2012) Bitter reproach or sweet revenge: Cultural responses to racism. Personality . info:/
- April 20, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 283 views
When good leadership goes wrong
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
Monty Python fans recall the optimistic pluckiness of the black knight who threatens King Arthur even after being completely de-limbed. “It’s only a flesh wound!” he chirps and asks Arthur to walk over to where the knight has fallen so he can bite King Arthur’s legs. King Arthur refers to him as a “lunatic” but also [...]
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Conger, J. (1990) The dark side of leadership. Organizational Dynamics, 19(2), 44-55. DOI: 10.1016/0090-2616(90)90070-6
- April 16, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 696 views
The incompetence stereotype: “Black people have less leadership competence”
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
You know. Black folks. They are not as intelligent, determined or decisive. They just are not good leaders. When a black leader performs poorly–this stereotype is used to explain the poor performance. But, when a black leader performs well–this stereotype is less useful. Then, we are likely to attribute “compensatory attributes” to the exceptional black [...]
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Carton, A., & Rosette, A. (2011) Explaining Bias against Black Leaders: Integrating Theory on Information Processing and Goal-Based Stereotyping. The Academy of Management Journal, 54(6), 1141-1158. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2009.0745
- April 13, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 371 views
Simple Jury Persuasion: Oooh! Seeing that makes me so angry!!!
by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room
We’ve read repeatedly about how video games might increase aggression and how the internet makes us stupid. Each of these positions has proponents and opponents who hotly debate each other at seemingly every opportunity. And if you have heard of the movie, Mean Girls, then you know what the term “relational aggression” means. Researchers wondered whether [...]
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Coyne SM, Linder JR, Nelson DA, & Gentile DA. (2012) "Frenemies, Fraitors, and Mean-em-aitors": Priming Effects of Viewing Physical and Relational Aggression in the Media on Women. Aggressive Behavior. PMID: 22331575
- April 11, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 337 views
Hmmm….maybe you should ask for a bench trial
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
Experienced (and even inexperienced) trial lawyers know that entrusting your case to a group of a dozen strangers in a jury is a gamble. The venire can shift dramatically from day to day, for no discernible reason. You never know what you are going to get. This is why jury selection is really a process [...]
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Minson JA, & Mueller JS. (2012) The cost of collaboration: why joint decision making exacerbates rejection of outside information. Psychological Science, 23(3), 219-24. PMID: 22344447
- April 9, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 266 views
Do judges who instruct jurors to avoid social media have an impact?
by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room
Yes, says Amy St. Eve (a federal judge in Chicago). While the judge doesn’t do either Facebook or Twitter herself, she has polled jurors in her courtroom by asking two questions embedded in a larger written survey: “Were you tempted to communicate about the case through any social networks, such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube [...]
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St. Eve, A., & Zuckerman, MA. (2012) Ensuring an impartial jury in the age of social media. Duke Law and Technology Review, 11(1). info:/
- April 6, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 525 views
“I feel pretty, oh so pretty!” but I’m not shallow about it.
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
Natalie Wood cooed these words in the musical West Side Story years ago–well, at least the first clause of our title. And now, fifty years later, science is reminding me of that old song. It’s a long-standing tenet of social psychology that we tend to see physically attractive people more positively. Yet, at the same time, [...]
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Ivtzan, I., & Moon, HS. (2008) The beauty of self-actualisation: Linking physical attractiveness and self-fulfillment. European Journal of Psychology, 4(4). info:/
- April 4, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 350 views
Have you been keeping up with the ‘sexsomniac’ defense?
by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room
It’s been used successfully several times since we first wrote about it back in December of 2009. In 2009, we told you about a landscaper named Jan Luedecke who got drunk at a party in 2003 and fell asleep. He woke up and then went to a woman asleep on another couch, put on a [...]
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Zaharna, M., Budur, K., & Noffsinger, S. (2007) ‘Sexsomnia’ disrupts sleep, threatens relationships, and has forensic implications. . Current Psychiatry. info:/
- April 2, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 343 views
“Stop picking fights and get some emotional intelligence!”
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
Now that’s a great line. The kind I wish I had the presence of mind to say when someone furious is trying to bully me into acquiescence. Of course, the kind of person who would be the best recipient of the line is also unlikely to make good use of it. Sigh. Fortunately, I have [...]
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Ford BQ, & Tamir M. (2012) When getting angry is smart: Emotional preferences and emotional intelligence. Emotion (Washington, D.C.). PMID: 22309721
- March 30, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 317 views
“Glasses can’t hide neck tattoos”
by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room
It’s been more than a year since we first wrote about the “nerd defense”. Essentially, this is the practice of sticking eyeglasses on your allegedly dangerous defendant to communicate their innocence to members of the jury. But now, the Washington Post has finally picked up the practice and we thought we’d mention it again. Here’s how [...]
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Brown, M. J., Henriquez, E., & Groscup, J. (2008) The effects of eyeglasses and race on juror decisions involving a violent crime. . American Journal of Forensic Psychology , 26(2), 25-43. info:/
- March 26, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 526 views
Should you maybe change your last name so people like you better?
by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room
So you may have read about the life-long curse of an unpopular first name. But there’s more. Before you run off to change your first name, you may want to consider your last name as well! I’ve always liked my last name. It’s unusual and it’s phonetic. Hand. Rich. Simple. I never understood why people mangled [...]
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Laham, S., Koval, P., & Alter, A. (2012) The name-pronunciation effect: Why people like Mr. Smith more than Mr. Colquhoun. . Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(3), 752-756. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2011.12.002
- March 23, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 529 views
Simple Jury Persuasion: Don’t deplete me
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
We’ve written a lot about racial bias and how it effects all of us. This research is a little scary in highlighting how simple it is for well-meaning ‘interventions’ to result in negative impact for ethnic minorities. Most of us are familiar with the idea of “color-blindness” when it comes to varying racial groups. Many of us [...]
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Holoien, D., & Shelton, J. (2012) You deplete me: The cognitive costs of colorblindness on ethnic minorities. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(2), 562-565. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2011.09.010
- March 21, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 311 views
Are female stalkers less likely to be violent than male stalkers?
by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room
It’s been almost a year since we first wrote about female stalkers. That was research with a US sample. Now we see some new research out of Sweden and Australia with some interesting similarities and contrasts. This new research provides a terrific reference list of prior work done on women stalkers and reports a high rate [...]
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Strand, S., & McEwan, T. (2011) Violence among female stalkers. Psychological Medicine, 42(03), 545-555. DOI: 10.1017/S0033291711001498
- March 14, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 946 views
So maybe your faith can’t move mountains but you can predict who wins American Idol
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
You just have to believe. In your emotions, that is. Too often we blame our emotions for our negative behavior–like overeating, or other misbehavior. As Jonah Lehrer aptly observes, “People commit crimes of passion. There are no crimes of rationality.” Researchers at the Columbia Business School asked research participants (aka undergraduate students) to tell them [...]
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Michel Tuan Pham, Leonard Lee, & Andrew T. Stephen. (2012) Feeling the Future: The Emotional Oracle Effect. Journal of Consumer Research. info:/
- March 12, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 288 views
Are we all Millennials at heart? On cynicism when exposed to deception
by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room
When my now 20 year old son was an adolescent he would often talk back to the TV during advertisements with “Yeah, right!” and I worried (like a good psychologist-parent) that I was raising a “too cynical” child. He grew out of the vocalization but not out of the tendency toward cynicism which I know [...]
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Craig, A., Loureiro, Y., Wood, S., & Vendemia, J. (2011) Suspicious Minds: Exploring Neural Processes During Exposure to Deceptive Advertising. Journal of Marketing Research, 1-12. DOI: 10.1509/jmr.09.0007
- March 7, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 264 views
Simple Jury Persuasion: Hearsay evidence & the expert witness
by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room
Hearsay testimony is often admissible in cases of child abuse when the individual who interviewed the child recounts the child’s testimony in court. This strategy is meant to protect the child from embarrassment and repetitive trauma in the courtroom. Recent research (according to the current authors) has highlighted at least two potential issues with even [...]
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Simple Jury Persuasion: When does the expert witness need to be prepared?
Simple Jury Persuasion: Make Your Expert Opt........ Read more »
Nunez, N., Gray, J., & Buck, JA. (2011) Educative expert testimony: A one-two punch can affect jurors’ decisions. Journal of Applied Social Psychology. . info:/
- March 2, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 467 views
You are naked in public! Did your brain make you do it?
by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room
Wardrobe malfunctions. We know what they are. Some of us have had them. We can’t show you a picture of a wardrobe malfunction up though because this is not that sort of website. Yet the question is simple: Can your brain make you disrobe in public without your awareness? As in, “it’s not my client’s [...]
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And the jury says: “His brain really DID make him do it!”
Do our brains ‘make us’ murder?
Confused about brain scans? Welcome to the club!
... Read more »
Wortzel, H., Strom, L., Anderson, A., Maa, E., & Spitz, M. (2012) Disrobing Associated with Epileptic Seizures and Forensic Implications. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 57(2), 550-552. DOI: 10.1111/j.1556-4029.2011.01995.x
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