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By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: This past Tuesday, it was time for the 2016 campaign’s vice presidential debate pitting Republican Mike Pence against Democrat Tim Kaine. Broadly, the vice presidential comparison does not matter too much, because people tend to vote based on party and based on the person at the top — not so much

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: This is a political season for double standards, glass ceilings, and dancing backwards in high heels. Hillary Clinton, as the first female to be nominated for President by a major party, finds herself locked in a close race with one of the least conventional candidates in modern times, Donald Trump. That combination

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: The basics of public speaking aren’t that hard to learn. But among even experienced speakers and persuaders, some seem to be more magnetic than others. That factor, charisma, makes the speaker more interesting and the content more likely to seem clear and influential. It is believed that the charisma factor played an

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Sometimes the facts are right in front of the jurors’ faces, and other times they are in a black box needing to be inferred rather than observed. Intent is one such black box issue. In a recent case, for example, jurors had to decide if a defendant, John Lewis, acted in a “willful,

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: When people laugh together, they’re willing to disclose more to each other. A recent post in Psyblog highlights a study (Gray, Parkinson, & Dunbar, 2015) in which groups of strangers sat together to watch a video documentary, a boring clip about golf, or a comedian. Those who watched the comedian were more likely to

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: One theme that long-time readers of this blog will recognize is that persuasion is essentially self-persuasion. Rather than accepting what I call the “consumer model” of persuasion, in which an advocate presents a fully-formed position to an audience who either “buys” it or doesn’t, I see persuasion as an act that requires participation from your

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: A dominant factor motivating discussions of the jury is the factor of bias: Identifying it, striking the worst of it, and adapting to the the portion that remains. But if bias stems from the facts of being human, developing experience, and having attitudes (and it does), then there is no reason to

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: HBO’s Game of Thrones is one of many shows that play on the ambiguity of characters who are not clearly good or evil. The Jaime Lannister who pushed young Bran Stark off a tower to his expected death on the stones below is the same Jaime Lannister who risked his life to

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: The national conversation has recently focused on police brutality against African Americans (in the wake of the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile) as well as hostility and violence toward the police (in the wake of the killing of five Dallas officers). For defense attorneys in the trial of

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Imagine this. The jury has just been instructed that they are the judges of credibility, and are told to pay close attention to witness demeanor during testimony. Then, the witness arrives and takes the stand, wearing a niqab, the Islamic face-covering that leaves only the eyes exposed. “Great, so what