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The Effects of Loneliness and Moral Reasoning of Jurors on
Jury Deliberations and Verdicts
Abstract One hundred and ninety-five undergraduate students participated in a mock-jury investigation to evaluate the behavioral and functional influences of principled moral reasoning and loneliness. Deliberations, following the administration of pretrial DIT Principled Moral Reasoning (PMR) scale and UCLA Loneliness scale, provided support for the seemingly robust principled moral reasoning findings. Participants with the highest levels of legal reasoning dominated jury deliberations and were able to shift other jury members towards their opinions. However, no significant relationship was found between deliberation behavior and loniliness. Additionally, no interaction was found between moral reasoning and loneliness. While the principled moral reasoning phenomenon suggests that only few jury members are controlling deliberations, this is in fact a positive finding. These jurors have the most developmentally advanced reasoning and are thereby focusing the jury on legally relevant information. Introduction A growing body of research suggests that a number of juror personality components are linked to the jury decision making processes (Berg & Vidmar, 1975; Lupher, Cohen, & Bernard, 1987; Phares & Wilson, 1972 ). The purpose of this study is to examine whether: (a) loneliness is associated with how individuals function as jury members, and whether that affects jury deliberations and verdicts; and (b) Principle Moral Reasoning is associated with dominance of jury deliberations and verdicts, as have been found by Rotenberg, Hewlett, and Siegwart (1998). Attributes of Jurors A number of previous investigations have found that a jurors personality can influence jury decision making. Berg and Vidmar (1975) investigated the relationship between a juror's degree of authoritarianism, the severity of verdicts, and the type of trial information that was attended too. Results indicated that high authoritarians were more severe jurors than low authoritarians, particularly with cases regarding defendants with low social status. High authoritarians gave defendants of low social status significantly more severe sentences then their higher status counterparts. As well, when tested, high authoritarians recalled mainly legally-irrelevant information regarding the defendant's characteristics. Research has also examined the relation between a juror's locus of control beliefs and the jury deliberation decision processes (Phares & Wilson, 1972). The internal locus of control trait consists of ones belief that individuals have control over their lives and actions. Those with an external locus of control believe that individuals do not have any significant control over their lives, and thus cannot be held responsible for events that occur around them. The author's found that mock-jurors who scored high on a measure of internal control attributed more responsibility to the defendants than jurors who scored high on a measure of external control. Sosis (1974) believes that these effects occur because of projection. It appears that jurors were applying their own self-perceptions of responsibility onto their judgements of others. Go To Page: 1 2 |
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