Judges are increasingly using implicit bias instructions in jury trials. Implicit bias instructions are meant to educate jurors, transform what is implicit or unconscious into something recognizable to jurors, and steer jurors away from relying on implicit biases when considering evidence and making judgments. Lynch and colleagues (2022) explored the effect of an implicit bias instruction (warning about unconscious bias) versus a standard explicit bias instruction (warning about the need to avoid prejudice) in the context of possible racial bias in a mock trial study involving over 600 mock jurors....

Jurors exist in a day-to-day world consisting primarily of visual presentations of information, a world that eschews purely verbal presentations of information. A courtroom trial exists is a very different world, a world that often emphasizes the verbal and oral over the visual and technological. Between 2011 and 2017, a federal district judge in the Northern District of Illinois, Honorable Amy St. Eve, asked over 500 jurors in some 50 civil and criminal trials to complete a voluntary, anonymous questionnaire at the conclusion of their jury service (St. Eve & Scavo, 2018; St. Eve, 2021). Jurors were asked five questions,

Jurors do not experience a criminal trial as neutral blank slates. Jurors come to the trial with pre-existing attitudes and beliefs about many issues, including about the legal system. Social science researchers have used the Pre-Trial Juror Attitude Questionnaire (PJAQ) to measure a juror legal attitudes in criminal cases (Lecci & Myer, 2008). The PJAQ asks people to agree or disagree with statements that address their conviction proneness, confidence in the legal system, views of innate criminality, cynicism towards the defense, social justice and racial bias. People agreeing with many PJAQ statements have harsher attitudes toward criminal defendants. Statements on

Jurors typically have strong opinions about the attorneys in their case, impressed by some conduct and irritated by other conduct. Between 2011 and 2017, a federal district judge in the Northern District of Illinois, Honorable Amy St. Eve, asked more than 500 jurors in some 50 different trials to complete a voluntary, anonymous questionnaire at the conclusion of their jury service about what they liked and disliked about the conduct of attorneys in their case (St. Eve & Scavo, 2018; St. Eve, 2021). Jurors were asked to list in order (1) three things that the lawyers did during trial that

In civil cases, attorneys often show jurors gruesome images of a plaintiff's injuries. Photographs are often presented not only to describe and inform jurors of injuries, but also to arouse emotions in jurors of sympathy, disgust, fear, anger and sadness. Research has shown that liability decisions are affected by viewing gruesome photographs. For example, one study found that viewing photographs of a girl who had been hit by a car and suffered a bleeding head wound significantly increased liability verdicts relative to those who learned the details about the injury but did not see the photographs (Bright and Goodman-Delahunty, 2011).

Violations of the letter of the law can be distinct from violations of the spirit of the law. The letter of the law is a formal boundary between that which is legal and illegal, such as driving over the speed limit or parking in a handicapped parking spot without a special permit. The spirit of the law is the perceived intention of the law which is often shaped by political, moral and social values about how people should act. A person, technically, can be held culpable for any violation of the letter of the law, yet jurors do not always

Jurors commonly are allowed to take notes during trial. Dann and colleagues (2004, 2020) investigated the content of notes taken by mock jurors and examined how jurors take notes about simple and complex evidence. While most of the notes taken by the mock jurors involved factual or evidentiary matters, nearly a quarter referred to judicial instructions and ....

Numerous studies have shown that jurors' damages decisions are strongly affected by the damages amount suggested by a plaintiff's attorney, independent of the strength of the actual evidence, a psychological effect known as "anchoring". Simply put, the more money asked, the more jurors award, even when the damages anchors suggested by plaintiff attorneys are extreme or absurdly high. Campbell and colleagues (2016) investigated whether civil defendants can effectively rebut a damages anchor proposed by a plaintiff's attorney....

hile most jurors take notes during trial when allowed to do so, not every juror chooses to do so. Dann and colleagues (2004) report on juror note-taking among 480 community members who watched a 70 minute videotaped trial filmed in a real courtroom using legal professionals to play the parts of the judge and lawyers. Lorek and colleagues (2019a, 2019b) explored whether prior jury service influenced juror note-taking and conducted three studies exploring how juror note-taking was influenced by jurors' handwriting speed, short-term memory capacity and attentional span....

Almost every state that enforces the death penalty allows for victim impact statements during the penalty phase of the trial. Nunez and colleagues (2017) examined the effects of angry and sad victim impact statements on 581 jury eligible and death qualified mock jurors. Mock jurors watched the penalty phase of a capital trial. For one group of jurors, the penalty phase had no victim impact statement. For a second group of jurors, the trial included a victim impact statement with emotional content that was sad. For a third group of jurors, the trial included a victim impact statement with emotional