Doctoral Dissertation Research: Cognitive Depletion and Motivation to Avoid Prejudice during Jury Deliberation: A Self-Regulation Perspective on Interracial Group Decision-Making

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Increased diversity in juries ensures representation of ethnic minority voices, but racial diversity presents unique challenges to group deliberations. People find it difficult to interact with people from other racial groups, because they are concerned with appearing prejudiced or with experiencing prejudice from others. People often perform worse on memory and decision tasks after they interact with people of a different ethnicity, because of regulatory depletion -- a decrease in people's ability to control their thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. The more people try to regulate some aspects of their behavior (e.g., expressions of prejudice), the less able they are to regulate other aspects (e.g., focus on the evidence). Yet studies show that, when White jurors deliberate with minority (versus only White) jurors to judge a minority defendant, they actually remember more case facts and are more accurate. This study will test the effects of interracial deliberations and defendant race (i.e., White or African-American) on jurors' cognitive performance and motivation to reach a fair verdict, guided by the hypothesis that jurors' motivation to avoid racial prejudice in verdicts encourages them to perform their duty as jurors well even when the social interactions are depleting. Such research, which increases understanding of the interpersonal and cognitive processes at the heart of jury deliberations, can inform courts, policy makers, and the public, and better explain jurors' verdict decisions and inform court practices. Results can be used to influence policy recommendations about how to maximize the benefits of diversity by reducing depletion in the jury room.Specifically, the proposed experimental research relies on social psychological theories of self-regulation to test a model of group deliberation processes to investigate the effects of ethnic diversity on jury decisions. The strength model of self regulation states that people have limited abilities to regulate their behavior, thoughts, and emotions; therefore, regulatory efforts result in cognitive depletion and diminished performance. Using a self-regulation perspective, the proposed research promises to reconcile two sets of contradictory findings: (a) people are depleted after interacting with individuals from other racial groups (Richeson & Shelton, 2003; Richeson & Trawalter, 2005); (b) mixed-race juries are less racially biased and more thoughtful than all-White juries when they judge an African-American defendant (Bowers, Steiner, & Sandys, 2001; Sommers, 2006). What explains this discrepancy? The present project tests several hypotheses: (a) interracial deliberations are more depleting than racially homogeneous ones; (b) White jurors will be particularly depleted when they have to judge an African American defendant in the presence of African American jurors; but (c) White jurors' motivation to avoid being prejudiced against an African-American defendant (particularly when they deliberate with African-American jurors) would overcome their depletion and ensure they perform their jury task well. In a mock jury deliberation paradigm, juries will include 4 participants and either 2 White or 2 African American confederates, resulting in all-White or mixed juries. Jurors will view evidence from a trial in which the defendant will be presented as either White or African American. Jurors will be instructed about the law, then render individual verdicts, deliberate to reach consensus, and complete measures of regulatory depletion (i.e., Stroop test), memory, motivation to reach a fair verdict, implicit and explicit motivation to avoid prejudice, and impressions of other jurors. Videotaped deliberations will be coded to investigate jurors' focus on evidence and valuable contributions as a function of jury composition and defendant race.