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

法官经常“恢复”那些在审判期间表示不能公正的陪审员的名誉。本研究旨在探讨陪审员康复过程中的心理机制。研究1调查陪审员改过自新的两个组成部分的影响(即对法律的指导和促使公众承诺放弃偏见和遵纪守法)，以确定陪审员改过自新的影响是由于法官的信息影响还是规范影响。具体地说，我们将评估康复的结果是否与证据一致，或者与证据无关的偏向宽大的判决(因为在我们的研究中，消除偏见将导致更宽大的判决)。有偏见和不偏不倚的参与者将接受法官的讯问，作为模拟审判的一部分，然后观看精神错乱审判。如果康复对陪审员有信息影响，判决应该对NGRI判决的证据支持的变化表现出敏感性。研究2探索了一种假设，即对可归因于偏见的审前公开(PTP)的偏见的康复会促使陪审员参与思维抑制。由于试图抑制思想可能会导致被禁止信息的超可及性，我们预测当陪审员改过自新和认知繁忙时，PTP的影响可能会更大。研究2还研究了一种替代传统康复的方法，强调集中注意力而不是压抑。除了参与模拟情节外，研究2的陪审员还将仔细考虑裁决。

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.