Collaborative Research: Memory and Jury Deliberation: The Benefits and Cost of Collective Remembering

陪审团是美国司法系统的基石。六到十二个人联合起来，共同努力达成裁决。在审议过程中，陪审员不仅必须根据审判期间提出的证据做出裁决，而且还必须记住证据。在很大程度上，陪审员必须依靠自己的记忆力。在这里，法院的假设是，陪审团的集体记忆可能会比任何单独的努力产生更好、更完整的记忆。这一观点的困难在于，有新兴的心理学证据表明，群体的记忆往往少于个人记忆能力的总和。此外，现有的研究表明，一个人在谈话中说的话可以改变其他参与者的记忆--例如，通过强加误导性信息或导致遗忘。虽然这两种类型的对话效应都会影响后续的决策，但更关键的是，在某些情况下，这两种类型的影响都可能得到缓解。为此，本研究探索了陪审团审议可能重塑陪审员对审判期间提出的证据的记忆的方式，记忆的任何变化可能对陪审团的裁决产生的影响，以及减轻这些审议影响的方法。这项研究涉及七个采用模拟陪审团方法的实验。他们将考察：(1)关于协作记忆的研究是否适用于陪审团的审议；(2)陪审团的紧急共识故事反映了与已知的会话记忆一致的会话动态；(3)陪审团的裁决可以追溯到这些对记忆的会话影响；(4)会话对记忆的影响是陪审团组成的一个函数；以及(5)是否存在通过教学或使用助记技术来缓解这些潜在的负面会话影响的方法。

Juries are the bedrock of the American judicial system. Six or twelve people join together in a collaborative effort to arrive at a verdict. During deliberation, jurors must not only come to a verdict based on the evidence presented during the trial, but they must also remember the evidence. To a large extent, jurors must rely on their own memory. Here, the assumption of the Courts is that the collective memory of a jury is likely to lead to a better, more complete recollection than any individual effort. The difficulty with this position is that there is burgeoning psychological evidence indicating that groups often remember less than the sum of what individuals are capable of remembering. Moreover, extant research demonstrates that what one person says in a conversation can alter the memory of other participants - by imposing misleading information or inducing forgetting, for example. Although both types of conversational effects can affect subsequent decision-making, it is possible that, even more critically, both types can be mitigated in certain circumstances. To this end, the present research explores the way jury deliberation might reshape the memories jurors have of the evidence presented during the trial, the effect any change in memory might have on the verdict of the jury, and the means of mitigating these deliberation effects. The research involves seven experiments employing a mock jury methodology. They will examine whether (1) research concerning collaborative remembering applies to jury deliberations; (2) the emergent consensus story of a jury reflects the conversational dynamics consistent with what is known about conversational remembering; (3) the verdict of a jury can be traced to these conversational influences on memory; (4) the conversational influences on memory are a function of the composition of the jury; and (5) ways exist to mitigate these potentially negative conversational effects through instruction or use of mnemonic technology.