Rationality, Equity or Deliberation in Mock-Jury Damage Awards

以前关于民事陪审团的研究侧重于损害赔偿的大小，将其作为感知责任的指标，而没有讨论陪审员在确定适当损害赔偿时所使用的程序和策略。这项由洛夫特斯和古德曼博士主持的实验研究项目旨在研究陪审员和陪审团如何根据模糊和不完整的经济损害证据做出决定。利用从登记选民名单中挑选的潜在陪审员，计划进行两个模拟陪审团实验，重点是(A)一般裁决形式与具体裁决形式对陪审团如何裁决经济和非经济损害赔偿的影响，以及(B)感知的责任水平和寻求的损害赔偿对最终损害赔偿的影响。这些实验有望为该领域做出重要的科学贡献：它们应该阐明我们对陪审员遵循区分经济和非经济考量的标准陪审团指令的能力的了解。特别是，这些实验应该有价值地说明，精算裁决形式是否更有可能产生证据驱动的审议，而一般裁决形式是否更有可能产生裁决驱动的讨论。此外，这项工作应该大大增加我们对陪审员是否能够区分责任和损害赔偿问题以及商议是否能够做出这种区分的理解。最后，通过从陪审员那里获得审议前和审议后的数据，以及从陪审团那里获得充分的审议数据，这些研究应该有助于我们更广泛地了解群体程序对法律判决的影响。

Previous research on the civil jury has focused on the magnitude of damage awards as an indicator of perceived liability and has not addressed the processes and strategies used by jurors in determining appropriate damages. This program of experimental research being undertaken by Drs. Loftus and Goodman seeks to examine the ways in which jurors and juries make decisions based on ambiguous and incomplete evidence on economic damages. Using potential jurors drawn from a list of registered voters, two mock-jury experiments are planned that focus on (a) the influence of general versus specific verdict forms on how juries go about awarding economic and non-economic damages and (b) the influence of perceived level of liability and the magnitude of the damages being sought on ultimate damage awards. These experiments promise important scientific contributions to the field: They should illuminate our knowledge of jurors' abilities to follow standard jury instructions distinguishing economic and non-economic considerations. In particular, the experiments should valuably speak to whether an actuarial verdict form is more likely to yield evidence-driven deliberation and a general verdict form more likely to yield verdict-driven discussion. Also, the work should add substantially to our understanding of whether jurors are able to separate issues of liability and damages and whether deliberation enables making that distinction. Finally, by obtaining pre- and post- deliberation data from jurors as well as full deliberation data from juries, these studies should contribute broadly to our knowledge of the impact of group process on legal judgments.