Doctoral Dissertation Research: Improving the Accuracy of Juror Self-Reports of Bias during Rehabilitative Voir Dire

长期以来，法院一直承认审前宣传是陪审员偏见的一个来源。为了保障被告获得公平公正陪审团的权利，法院经常试图通过询问那些承认存在偏见的陪审员是否可以搁置偏见、保持公平和公正来“恢复”他们的偏见。然而，研究表明，陪审员对自己公平和公正能力的自我报告在很大程度上是不准确的。例如，无论他们在审前宣传中的暴露程度如何，陪审员通常都会报告他们有能力做到公平和公正。因此，这种陪审员改过自新的做法是无效的。提高自我报告的准确性至关重要，因为不准确的自我报告不仅损害被告获得公平和公正陪审团的权利，还可能造成额外的诉讼，从而需要法院提供宝贵的时间和资源，并削弱公众对法律制度准确性和合法性的信心。本研究考察了来自法官和其他陪审员的从众压力如何影响陪审员自我报告的准确性，并测试了旨在提高自我报告偏见准确性的新型干预措施的有效性。本项目在两个陪审团模拟实验中检查陪审员对其公平和公正能力的不准确报告背后的机制，以及陪审员康复的有效性。首先，这个项目将测试法官、其他陪审员或两者的行为是否通过培养压力来影响陪审员自我报告的准确性，以使他们的行为符合法官和其他潜在陪审员的要求。其次，本研究将检验在陪审员康复过程中降低从众压力和减弱审前公示对陪审员决策的偏向影响的干预措施的有效性。研究表明，审前公示在一定程度上通过制造源头监测错误来偏向陪审员的决策，即陪审员混淆了从审前公示中获得的证据与审判期间提出的证据。拟议的干预允许陪审员在被质疑是否有能力搁置偏见和保持公正之前，反思并记录通过审前公示获得的信息。这种干预措施应该会减少符合性压力和源头监测错误，进而提高自我报告的准确性。此外，拟议的研究将让在西班牙裔服务机构注册的学生担任研究助理，帮助来自代表性不足群体的学生为该科学的研究生学习做准备。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The courts have long acknowledged pretrial publicity as a source of juror bias. To safeguard defendants' rights to a fair and impartial jury, the courts frequently attempt to "rehabilitate" jurors who admit bias by asking them if they could set aside their bias and be fair and impartial. Yet research indicates that jurors' self-reports of their ability to be fair and impartial are largely inaccurate. For example, regardless of their level of exposure to pretrial publicity, jurors typically report an ability to be fair and impartial. Therefore, this practice of juror rehabilitation is ineffective. Enhancing self-reporting accuracy is critical given that inaccurate self-reports not only undermine defendants' right to a fair and impartial jury but can also create additional litigation, thus requiring valuable time and resources from the courts and weakening public confidence in the accuracy and legitimacy of the legal system. The present research examines how conformity pressures from the judge and other jurors influence jurors' self-reporting accuracy and tests the effectiveness of a novel intervention designed to increase the accuracy of self-reported bias. This project examines the mechanism behind jurors' inaccurate reports of their ability to be fair and impartial and the effectiveness of juror rehabilitation in two jury simulation experiments. First, this project will test whether the behaviors of the judge, other jurors, or both are influencing jurors' self-reporting accuracy by fostering pressures for them to conform their behavior to the request of the judge and other potential jurors. Second, this research will test the effectiveness of an intervention for decreasing conformity pressures during juror rehabilitation and attenuating the biasing effects of pretrial publicity on jurors' decision making. Research shows that pretrial publicity biases jurors' decision-making in part by creating source monitoring errors wherein jurors confuse evidence learned from pretrial publicity with evidence presented during trial. The proposed intervention allows jurors to reflect on and write down information obtained through pretrial publicity prior to being questioned about their ability to set aside bias and be impartial. This intervention should decrease conformity pressures and source monitoring errors and, in turn, increase self-reporting accuracy. In addition, the proposed research will involve students enrolled at a Hispanic-serving institution as research assistants, contributing to the preparation of students from underrepresented groups for graduate study in the sciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.