153 posts · 101,224 views
Doug Keene has a doctoral degree in Psychology and has worked as a trial consultant for the past 15 years. He is Past President of the American Society of Trial Consultants and has a full-service trial consulting practice. Twitter: @keenetrial
The Jury Room
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- May 9, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 331 views
The foreign-language effect: ESL Jurors
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
We’ve seen multiple examples of jurors being excused because they learned English as a second language (ESL) and their English is limited. But new research shows us that there may be an advantage to the juror thinking in English when it is their second language. Researchers were interested in if and how the use of a [...]
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Keysar, B., Hayakawa, S., & An, S. (2012) The Foreign-Language Effect: Thinking in a Foreign Tongue Reduces Decision Biases. Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611432178
- May 4, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 357 views
Simple Jury Persuasion: The “turban effect”
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
Yes, we know. You get this. Since 9-11-2001, we are all wary of Muslims and other turban-wearing people [who, after all, must be Muslim]. Regardless of the (in)accuracy of this perspective, it is prevalent and seemingly hard-wired in our brains. All the “true Islam does not condone violence” clarifications in the world do not seem to [...]
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Unkelbach, C., Forgas, J., & Denson, T. (2008) The turban effect: The influence of Muslim headgear and induced affect on aggressive responses in the shooter bias paradigm. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(5), 1409-1413. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2008.04.003
- 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. [...]
Related posts:
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’s in charge here—me or my brain?
... Read more »
Gervais WM, & Norenzayan A. (2012) Reminders of Secular Authority Reduce Believers' Distrust of Atheists. Psychological Science. PMID: 22477103
- April 25, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 413 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 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 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 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 2, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 342 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 23, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 527 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 14, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 945 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:/
- February 29, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 833 views
Are jurors more skeptical when a witness makes multiple IDs [some wrong] of the defendant?
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
We all know the hazards of eye-witness identification. It simply isn’t reliable. Yet jurors often are strongly convinced by the testimony of the eye witness. So researchers wondered if jurors would be swayed by knowledge of ID inconsistencies on the part of the eye witness. That is, if the witness chose someone other than the defendant [...]
Related posts:
Helping jurors ‘see’ what eye witnesses said they saw
But, your honor! That witness was drunk!
No one makes a deal on a handshake these days!
... Read more »
Pozzulo, JD, & O’Neill, MC. (2011) Juror decision making when a witness makes multiple identification decisions. Journal of Applied Social Psychology. info:/
- February 24, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 417 views
Simple Jury Persuasion: Pollyanna got a bad rap–maybe
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
Not only are ‘Pollyanna’ type people good lie detectors they are also good-hearted people in general. They “value relationships, prosocial behavior and smooth interpersonal interactions”. What wonderful jurors! Maybe. And maybe not. Imagine that your case involves allegations of conduct that Plaintiff or Prosecutor feels is an assault on social values. Behavior that Pollyanna would [...]
Related posts:
Simple Jury Persuasion: Christian religious concepts increase racial prejudice
Simple Jury Persuasion: The innuendo effect
Simple Jury Persuasion: Don’t confuse argument with persuasion
... Read more »
Kammrath, L., & Scholer, A. (2011) The Pollyanna Myth: How Highly Agreeable People Judge Positive and Negative Relational Acts. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(9), 1172-1184. DOI: 10.1177/0146167211407641
- February 20, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 508 views
Leading our unethical leaders: Behaving as we want our jurors to behave
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
Many of us have been members of organizations led by someone we consider unethical. And we’ve seen that people tend to excuse individual behavior when we see it as something done through the charismatic [albeit negative] influence of a group leader. Now researchers are looking at how we (as members of a group led by [...]
Related posts:
Barristers behaving badly
This is what a good leader does not look like
When identifying punishment—will jurors focus on intent or outcome?
... Read more »
HINRICHS, K., WANG, L., HINRICHS, A., & ROMERO, E. (2012) Moral Disengagement Through Displacement of Responsibility: The Role of Leadership Beliefs. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 42(1), 62-80. DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00869.x
- February 15, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 399 views
The hypercorrection effect: Correcting misinformation and false beliefs
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
“I know it’s true, I heard about it somewhere…”. Simple words that strike such fear in the hearts of lawyers monitoring mock jurors from behind the infamous mirrored glass. We’ve all heard it and the absolute certainty in tone that accompanies this dubious but emphatic proclamation. And we’ve also heard that it’s nearly impossible to [...]
Related posts:
Expert witness influence: Interrogation tactics and false confessions
Does desire trump beliefs based on facts when evaluating scientific evidence?
Images and ads create false memories
... Read more »
Butler, A., Fazio, L., & Marsh, E. (2011) The hypercorrection effect persists over a week, but high-confidence errors return. Psychonomic Bulletin , 18(6), 1238-1244. DOI: 10.3758/s13423-011-0173-y
- February 10, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 582 views
News You Can Use (like how Pepsi knows there was no mouse in your Mountain Dew)
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
From time to time we play catch-up with the research and include a number of things we think you would want to know. Most of it is serious. Every once in a while though, a need-to-know tidbit slips out in litigation that we cannot resist incorporating into a post. We know there was no mouse [...]
Related posts:
Breaking Bad News: Doing it Better
News flash: Lawyers Under Stress are Critical, Cautious & Distant
Communication is essential (and fraught with missteps)
... Read more »
McAndrew, FT, & De Jonge, CR. (2011) Electronic Person Perception: What do we infer about people from the style of their email messages? . Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(4), 403-407. info:/
- February 6, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 364 views
My soul is not for sale!
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
Oh really? Then why are the US Navy, the US Air Force and the NSF looking at how we make decisions to sell our souls? As it happens, when we are considering disavowing “sacred values”, a specific cognitive process occurs. That has to be good, of course, since we wouldn’t want soul-selling to be relegated [...]
Related posts:
“I can see it from both sides”
Derogating do-gooders [like vegetarians] is how I roll
Pretrial publicity & bias: Take a look at the age of your jurors!
... Read more »
Berns, G., Bell, E., Capra, C., Prietula, M., Moore, S., Anderson, B., Ginges, J., & Atran, S. (2012) The price of your soul: neural evidence for the non-utilitarian representation of sacred values. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 367(1589), 754-762. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2011.0262
- February 1, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 480 views
Does a ‘bad heart’ lead to a bad heart?
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
John Edwards apparently has a bad heart and this will delay his criminal trial. Cynical commenters snipe “oh, he has a heart?” and there is little sympathy for a man people see as narcissistic. And now we see this research showing that narcissistic men have chronically high cortisol levels which leads to (you know this) heart [...]
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Fernandez, K., Levinson, C., & Rodebaugh, T. (2012) Profiling: Predicting Social Anxiety From Facebook Profiles. Social Psychological and Personality Science. DOI: 10.1177/1948550611434967
- January 27, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 8,893 views
Pretrial publicity & bias: Take a look at the age of your jurors!
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
Despite the Supreme Court ruling [Skilling v US] that pretrial publicity [PTP] does not bias the public perception and limit the right to a fair trial, most of us who have experienced the impact of pretrial publicity disagree. It is an accepted truism that older people are more conservative than younger people. So it’s interesting to [...]
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Ruva, C., & Hudak, E. (2011) Pretrial publicity and juror age affect mock-juror decision making. Psychology, Crime , 1-24. DOI: 10.1080/1068316X.2011.616509
- January 23, 2012
- 07:02 AM
- 528 views
Republicans prefer ‘Republican-looking’ political candidates
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
As I consider the Republican Presidential candidate lineup, I can’t figure out just how a ‘Republican-looking’ candidate might look. Is it the patrician and reserved Mitt Romney? The disgruntled Newt Gingrich? The intense and dry humored conservative Ron Paul? The GQ-ready Rick Perry? Or someone else? I’m not sure what a Republican looks like. Or [...]
Related posts:
Men prefer boxes and women prefer ellipses?
A screwdriver: The new addition to your trial toolbox? (We think not.)
“Reactions vary along traditional partisan lines”
... Read more »
Olivola, C., Sussman, A., Tsetsos, K., Kang, O., & Todorov, A. (2012) Republicans Prefer Republican-Looking Leaders: Political Facial Stereotypes Predict Candidate Electoral Success Among Right-Leaning Voters. Social Psychological and Personality Science. DOI: 10.1177/1948550611432770
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