By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm –
When the Casey Anthony jury moves to the deliberation phase in the near future, it is possible to imagine one of two scenarios for how those deliberations discussions will start:
Scenario One: Okay, who here feels that she is guilty? Let’s just go around the table…
Scenario Two: Okay, let’s start plowing through the evidence. Where are those binders? Let’s just start with the first witness.
On the one hand, jurors can begin with a gestalt view of the verdict they want, and then work backward through the evidence in order to test that verdict; or they can begin with process and work their way over time to a verdict. Which scenario holds sway will depend on the personality style of those who end up as leaders. As the Rod Blagojevich trial enters its ninth day of deliberations without a verdict, one can surmise that the jury is either near deadlock, or they’ve embraced the second of those two scenarios.
This difference in approach is something that we see constantly in mock jury deliberations, and hear about after the fact in real jury deliberations. Some jurors are verdict driven and others are process driven. Recent research (Hart & Albarracin, 2011) also suggests our culture’s emphasis on action (a “just do it” mentality) is contributing to a preference for quick results and a decay in the motivation to work systematically and inductively to a conclusion. Based on the specifics of your case, it is important to know whether you benefit from a quick focus on the end result, or a longer-term focus on the process of reaching a decision, and it is important to know how to spot both types.
At first, it might seem like all sides in litigation would want verdict driven jurors. After all, it is a verdict you are after. Whoever for some parties, the most evident and obvious verdict choice after just a little thought won’t be the favorable verdict (both Rod Blagojevich and Casey Anthony come to mind). Those parties hang their hopes on a jury willing to embrace the process, suspending their immediate judgment while they dig deeply into the evidence.
One problem is jurors like that may be an endangered species. The Hart & Albarracin (2011) study focused on a favorite tool of the verdict driven juror: confirmation bias, or the tendency to give selective attention to information which confirms your point of view, rather than information that could lead you to rethink your opinions. These researchers found that even something as simple as using action-oriented words primes people toward greater reliance on confirmation bias. In that context, a culture constantly emphasizing doing over thinking or talking would serve as a continual encouragement for individuals, including jurors, to enact rapid decisions and then, when necessary, look for information that supports those decisions.
The Implications
So how do you identify jurors who are more likely to be process or verdict driven? The best tool probably lies in the psychological concept of “need for cognition” (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982), or “the tendency for an individual to engage in and enjoy thinking.” So, if your favorite show is Jeopardy — high need for cognition. If it is Jackass, well, not so much.
To the extent you are able to identify potential jurors with a high need for cognition, you are also spotting those who would be process rather than verdict driven. Aside from watching for those filling out Sodoku puzzles while they wait for questioning, there is also a scale to measure need for cognition. This set of 34 questions looks at agreement or disagreement with statements that are associated with both a high need for cognition (e.g., “I find satisfaction in deliberating hard and for long hours”), and those that predict a lower need (e.g., “It’s enough for me that something gets the job done; I don’t care how or why it works”). While those are not questions likely to flow smoothly in oral voir dire, or be asked directly by a judge, it can be effective to include these statements, or variants of them, in a supplemental juror questionnaire.
One final word is that need for cognition, as well as a preference for results oriented or process oriented performance, might apply to lawyers’ approaches to jury selection as well. In my experience, those who want a quick and simple test of whether jurors are good or bad will focus on demographics, or talk a lot about “gut feelings” toward jurors. Those who want to process the full picture will try to look at all factors, particularly attitudes and personality dimensions. Need for cognition, as well as the process or verdict orientation of your jurors, serves as one more tool for taking jury selection to the next level: focusing beyond self-evident, and generally non-predictive, aspects of jurors that you can see (like demographics), and instead discovering as much information as the court allows on the differences that will have the greatest effect on how a juror sees your case.
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Related Posts:
- Be Relatively Cautious With Absolutist Jurors
- Pay Close Attention to the Big Mouths in Voir Dire
- Understand Juror Bias, But Bet On The Evidence
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William Hart and Dolores Albarracin (2011). Craving Activity and Losing Objectivity: Effects of General Action Concepts on Approach to Decision-Consistent Information Social Psychological and Personality Science (May 19)
Photo Credit: bertiemabootoo, Flickr Creative Commons