Psychological Mechanisms Underlying the Biasing Effects of Voir Dire

Voir Dire 偏差效应背后的心理机制

• 批准号: 0520617
• 负责人: Margaret Bull Kovera
• 金额: $ 36.5万
• 依托单位: CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-02-15 至 2010-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0520617&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Psychological; Mechanisms; Underlying; Biasing; Effects

Voir dire is the legal proceeding during which attorneys and/or judges question prospective jurors for the purpose of uncovering bias that may prevent the defendant from receiving a fair trial; those jurors who are deemed biased may be challenged for cause and excused from jury service. Several studies have questioned whether attorneys are effective at determining whether prospective jurors are biased, and previous research has demonstrated that the voir dire process in capital trials makes those jurors who remain on the jury more conviction prone. Basic social-psychological research on hypothesis-testing, behavioral confirmation, and cognitive dissonance may provide insight into whether attorneys are capable of identifying biased jurors and whether the very process of identifying bias may adversely influence the decisions of the jurors seated in a case. There are several points during the voir dire process at which attorneys may be led astray when trying to predict the bias of individual jurors in capital cases. In the information seeking stage, attorneys' stereotypes or expectations about jurors may influence the types of questions that they ask of jurors, including questions that are biased toward confirming the attorney's hypothesis or that lack diagnosticity. In the information generation stage, attorneys' questions may influence the information gathered from jurors, especially if jurors are motivated to provide socially appropriate responses. In the inferential stage, the questions asked by attorneys, the hypotheses they hold, and the answers they receive from jurors may bias the conclusions that attorneys draw from jurors' responses to voir dire questions. Finally, the very act of endorsing a pro-capital punishment attitude, even an endorsement that is evoked through behavioral confirmation processes, may increase the likelihood that jurors will vote to convict a capital defendant.The PI will conduct four experimental studies to examine whether biased hypothesis testing and behavioral confirmation processes influence the quality of information elicited from jurors, the ability of attorneys to strike biased venirepersons from the jury panel, and whether behavioral confirmation during a capital voir dire may lead to dissonance reduction behavior, resulting in a more conviction prone jury. The results of these studies will provide valuable information about the voir dire process and how it might influence the quality of information obtained from prospective jurors and the subsequent decisions that they render, providing information that will help develop interventions for improving attorney-conducted voir dire. These studies represent a first attempt to move beyond traditional topics in jury selection research, namely identifying predictors of verdict, to identifying psychological processes that influence the efficacy of the jury selection process.

Voir Dire 是一种法律程序，在该程序中，律师和/或法官向未来的陪审员提问，目的是发现可能妨碍被告接受公平审判的偏见；那些被认为有偏见的陪审员可能会受到质疑并免于担任陪审员。 一些研究质疑律师是否能有效地确定未来的陪审员是否存在偏见，之前的研究表明，死刑审判中的预审程序使那些留在陪审团中的陪审员更容易被定罪。 关于假设检验、行为确认和认知失调的基本社会心理学研究可以深入了解律师是否有能力识别有偏见的陪审员，以及识别偏见的过程是否可能对案件中陪审员的决定产生不利影响。在预审过程中，律师在试图预测死刑案件中个别陪审员的偏见时，可能会在几个时刻误入歧途。在信息寻求阶段，律师对陪审员的刻板印象或期望可能会影响他们向陪审员提出的问题类型，包括偏向证实律师假设或缺乏诊断性的问题。在信息生成阶段，律师的问题可能会影响从陪审员那里收集的信息，特别是如果陪审员有动力提供适合社会的回应。在推理阶段，律师提出的问题、他们持有的假设以及从陪审员那里得到的答案可能会影响律师从陪审员对重要问题的回答中得出的结论。最后，支持死刑态度的行为本身，即使是通过行为确认过程引起的认可，也可能会增加陪审员投票判定死刑被告有罪的可能性。PI将进行四项实验研究，以检验有偏见的假设检验和行为确认过程是否会影响陪审员获得的信息的质量，以及律师从陪审团中剔除有偏见的人的能力。 小组，以及在资本审讯期间的行为确认是否可能导致不和谐行为减少，从而导致陪审团更容易定罪。 这些研究的结果将提供有关预审程序的宝贵信息，以及它如何影响从潜在陪审员那里获得的信息的质量以及他们做出的后续决定，提供的信息将有助于制定改善律师进行预审的干预措施。这些研究首次尝试超越陪审团选择研究中的传统主题，即确定判决的预测因素，以识别影响陪审团选择过程有效性的心理过程。