About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about mock jury research, focusing in particular on: (i) potential issues with jury research, including the overreliance on student samples in mock jury studies and the fact that researchers are not allowed into the jury deliberation room when observing real cases; (ii) the lack of ecological validity in mock jury research; (iii) Bornstein and colleagues’ 2016 meta-analysis, which studied student versus non-student samples in mock jury research, looking at the dependent variables of guilty verdict, culpability and sentencing; (iv) Bornstein and colleagues’ findings, that student samples ‘convicted’ more often when the case information was presented in a written form, but no more than non-student samples when the case was presented live or as a video; (v) Salerno and Peter-Hagene’s 2015 study, which found that the presence of an angry male jury member reduced jury confidence in decision making, while the presence of an angry female jury member increased confidence; (vi) some criticisms of the methodology in Salerno and Peter-Hagene’s 2015 study, looking at its use of too small a jury and the unrepresentative medium of written case information; (vii) the case of Glen Bates, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of his two-year-old daughter by a jury which contained a racially biased member; (viii) the answers given by juror 31 in Glen Bates’ case, which indicated racial bias.

About the lecturer

Dr Cody Porter is a senior lecturer in social psychology in the department of Health and Social Sciences at the University of the West of England. Dr Porter’s research interests are in information elicitation, lie detection and offending behaviour. Some of Dr Porter’s recent publications include ‘Implementing converged security risk management: Drivers, barriers, and facilitators’ (in press) and ‘Applying the asymmetric information management technique to insurance claims’ (2022).