Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Investigation of the Psychological Processes Involved in Juror Rehabilitation

法官经常“恢复”那些在预先审查期间表示无法做到公正的陪审员。本研究探讨陪审员康复过程中的心理机制。研究1调查了陪审员康复的两个组成部分的影响（即，法律方面的指导和引导公众承诺放弃偏见并遵守法律），以确定陪审员复职的影响是由于法官的信息影响还是规范影响。具体而言，我们将评估康复是否会导致与证据一致的判决或偏向宽大的判决（因为在我们的研究中消除偏见将导致更宽大的判决），而不管证据如何。有偏见和无偏见的参与者将受到法官的质疑，作为模拟陪审团的一部分，然后观看精神病审判。如果康复对陪审员有信息上的影响，判决应表现出对NGRI判决的证据支持变化的敏感性。研究2探讨了这一假设，即康复偏见归因于偏见审前宣传（PTP）提示陪审员进行思想抑制。由于试图抑制思维可能会导致被禁信息的超可及性，我们预测，当陪审员康复和认知忙碌时，PTP的影响可能会更大。研究2还探讨了传统康复的替代方案，强调集中而不是抑制。除了参与模拟预先审查外，研究2中的陪审员还将审议裁决。

Judges often "rehabilitate" jurors who express inability to be fair during voir dire. The present research examines psychological mechanisms operating during juror rehabilitation. Study 1 investigates the impact of two components of juror rehabilitation (i.e., instruction on the law and elicitation of a public commitment to forgo bias and follow the law) to determine whether the influence of juror rehabilitation is due to informational or normative influences from the judge. Specifically, we will assess whether rehabilitation results in verdicts that are consistent with the evidence or verdicts that are biased toward leniency (as removal of bias in our study would result in a more lenient verdict) irrespective of the evidence. Biased and unbiased participants will be questioned by a judge as part of a mock voir dire and then watch an insanity trial. If rehabilitation has an informational influence on jurors, verdicts should show sensitivity to variations in evidentiary support of an NGRI verdict. Study 2 explores the hypothesis that rehabilitation for bias attributable to prejudicial pretrial publicity (PTP) prompts jurors to engage in thought suppression. As attempts at thought suppression may lead to hyperaccessibility of the banned information, we predict the effect of PTP may be larger when jurors are rehabilitated and cognitively busy. Study 2 also examines an alternative to traditional rehabilitation that emphasizes concentration instead of suppression. In addition to participation in a mock voir dire, jurors in Study 2 will deliberate to a verdict.