The Emotional Influence of Gruesome Photographs in the Courtroom

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Visual images depicting a criminal act can strongly influence judgments about blame and punishment. In the past decade, the use of visual evidence and arguments in courtrooms has exploded, but empirical research on the effects of these tools on legal decision-making has just begun. Lawyers, judges, and juries are faced with a barrage of images, often gruesome in nature. When determining whether to exclude gruesome photographs, judges must decide whether the prejudicial effect outweighs their probative value. This project addresses the legally relevant question of how and why gruesome photographs increase guilt and punishment judgments to better inform judges' admissibility decisions. More specifically, this project examines how emotionally evocative images can pose a danger of unfair prejudice by making jurors more conviction-prone--even when the images do not provide additional probative information. This is achieved by exploring the effect of gruesome photographs on mock jurors' physiological and emotional response to the evidence, attention to other case evidence, and the jury deliberation process. The research will also test the effectiveness of several realistic and relatively simple legal safeguards that might mitigate the prejudicial effects of gruesome photographs without sacrificing their probative information (i.e., substituting black-and-white photographs, jury instructions, deliberation). The implications will extend beyond courtrooms to inform recent broader societal questions about whether the public should be exposed to graphic images of harm to inform policy debates, such as images of school shootings, police shootings, or torture of U.S. military detainees.This project brings together an interdisciplinary team to conduct three experiments testing whether viewing gruesome photographs increases negative emotion, which in turn biases jurors' attention to other case evidence in a pro-prosecution direction, which ultimately increases their confidence in a guilty verdict and greater punitiveness. Jury-eligible adults will view evidence from a murder trial that includes either no gruesome photographs, B&W gruesome photographs, or color gruesome photographs of the murder victim and then will make legal judgments about the case. Participants' physiological emotional responses will be monitored throughout the process. This project represents the first investigation of gruesome images on legal decision making that incorporates jury-level outcomes, physiological monitoring, visual attention to other evidence, and the dynamics of the group deliberation process. Identifying specific psychological mechanisms by which photographs influence judgments (emotional responses, attention to other evidence, deliberation processes) will inform legal doctrine by clarifying the circumstances under which these photographs are likely to result in unfair prejudice.