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An Effect of Decision Rule on the Stability of Mock Juries' Verdicts

Korean Journal of Social and Personality Psychology / Korean Journal of Social and Personality Psychology, (P)1229-0653;
2009, v.23 no.1, pp.91-110
https://doi.org/10.21193/kjspp.2009.23.1.006


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Abstract

The present study is to examine whether different decision rules as external norms imposed on the decision group affect the behavior and the final decision of the group differently. Specifically, based on the definition of the stability of jury verdicts as the degree to which different juries render the same verdict for the same case, the stability of mock juries' verdicts under the unanimity rule were compared with that under the simple majority rule. Eighty mock juries of 8 members for each deliberated and rendered verdicts for a murder case in which the defendant pleaded “not guilty” for the reason of self-defense. Half (40) of the juries rendered the verdict under the unanimity rule and the other half rendered the verdict under the simple majority rule. The juries under each of the decision rules were again randomly assigned into four conditions of evidence state:conflicting, exonerating, incriminating, and vague evidence states. The distribution of the verdicts under the unanimity rule yielded lower information entropy than the distribution under the simple majority rule, suggesting that the verdicts under the unanimity rule may be more stable than those under the simple majority rule. Two reasons for the higher stability of the verdicts under the unanimity rule were suggested:The verdicts under the unanimity rule, compared to those under the simple majority rule, correspond more closely to the objective state of the evidence specially in the conflicting and vague evidence condition; jurors deliberating under the unanimity rule are more open to the minority perspectives as predicted by the theory of leniency contract (Crano & Chen, 1998). Implications of the results for the trials by lay participation implemented in Korea were discussed.

keywords
Keywords: Decision rule, Jury, Stability of verdicts, 주요어:결정규칙, 배심단, 평결의 안정성

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Korean Journal of Social and Personality Psychology