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Jury Decision
Making. The power
of the minority
Current perspectives in crime and psychology.
Sarah van Mastrigt
Teresa Gracia
Bachelor Degree 2011-2012
Aarhus University
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Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University
INDEX
INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………...
JURY AND JUROR DECISION MAKING …………………………
Models of Juror Decision Making ……………………………………….
WHAT DETERMINES THE INFLUENCE OF .
THE MINORITY? ………………………………………………………
Influence determined by group characteristics..........................................
Influence determined by individual members’ characteristics .................
Influence determined by situational characteristics..................................
CONLCUSION.................................................................................
REFERENCES.................................................................................
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Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University
“The ideal juror is one who can dispassionately listen to the trial evidence and is savvy
enough to render a verdict based on rational and prejudice-free thought processes. The real
juror, on the other hand, is not the blank slate that the judicial system
prefers and presumes to exist.”
(Winter, R. J. and Greene, E., 2008; pg. 741).
It is not far from reality to believe that a big part of the society considers jury members as
people who has some sort of special characteristics that make them more suitable or capable to
take the serious decisions that are supposed to be taken inside a jury room. Since it is commonly
known that the election of jury members is made randomly among all the citizens (over a
determined age) it shouldn’t be really trustable to affirm that are special abilities, or factors, the
ones that make these people to be elected. However, they do are certain individual, collective
and contextual characteristics that highly influence the way the decisions are taken inside a jury
room. So, actually, it is true, in a certain way, that people from the jury has characteristics that
can affect in several different ways the jury decision making process, the only fact is that not
determined people but anybody can influence in a special way inside a jury room.
The focus of this paper is related to some of these influences that take part in the jury decision
making process, concretely the called “Minority Influence”. I personally consider interesting to
investigate this topic, mainly, because minorities are not normally considered really “powerful”
in real life, but they can be influential in several ways depending on different factors, though we
have to remain in a realistic point of view, bearing in mind that situations like the ones we can
observe in movies such as “Twelve angry men” (1957) or “The runaway jury” (2003) are not
really probable.
Thus, my proposal is an analysis in this paper about the following aim research question: What
factors promote minority influence in the jury room?
To best answer my question, I am first going to summarize the general proceeding o Jury
Decision Making, to clarify the standard process in which how juries and jurors make decisions
and I am also going to name briefly what are the main juror decision making models, but I am
going only to describe one of the types since the rest are not really essential to discuss the topic
of my paper. And second, I organize the paper around three types of factors that determine the
influence of the minority: (1) group characteristics, (2) Minority members’ characteristics and
(3) situational characteristics. To perform this, I am principally going to focus the study of each
factor around different models/theories; I am also going to introduce other factors that can
influence them more direct or indirectly. Finally, I am going to conclude the paper analysis with
the most important concepts that are closer to give an answer to my aim research question.
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Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University
JURY AND JUROR DECISION MAKING
Winter, R. J. and Greene, E. (2008) start their chapter Juror Decision-making arguing: “In any
jury trial, empanelled members must sift through conflicting arguments and evidence
presentations and a series of exhaustive jury instructions that frequently involve concepts and
language unfamiliar to most laypeople. Then, during their deliberations, jurors are asked to
recall vast amounts of trial evidence, expected to understand and apply their instructions, and
ultimately, to decide on an “appropriate” verdict” (Handbook of applied cognition, pg. 739).
Diamond et al. (1989) states that the basic purpose of a jury is to make a final decision on guilt,
liability, and/or damage awards. The jury evaluates evidence presented during court proceedings
and has to apply legal rules to the facts as those facts and the law have been presented to them.
Research about jury decision making has traditionally been done within two contexts: the group
decision and the individual juror decision. A typical jury moves through three stages during
deliberation (Levett et al., 2005; Stasser, 1992): orientation, open conflict and reconciliation.
Orientation phase takes place when jurors elect who is going to be their foreperson and when
they discuss the procedures and the general trial issues. .
Deliberation can normally follow two different ways. On one side we can find the denominated
verdict given which consists of beginning the deliberation by taking an initial public vote and
then orienting the discussion around that vote. On the other side we find the named evidence
driven, and we talk about focusing on the evidence presented at trial as the way to start the
deliberation and jurors try to create the best story accounting for all of the evidence.
In the stage of open conflict, jurors attempt to persuade their fellow jurors to reach a verdict
(Costanzo, 2003; Stasser 1992). Reconciliation arrives as the final stage when, after the jury
reaches a final verdict, they try to make sure that every member is satisfied with the verdict.
In case unanimity is required, the decision making processed used by unanimous juries might
differ from the processes used by majority rule juries, where votes are taken earlier and
spending more time and the use of normative influence is usually present.
Models of Juror Decision Making
Most of the literature on jury decision making has been focused on how the decisions are made
by jurors from an individual point of view, even though juries make decisions as groups.
The prevailing models of juror decision making are generally classified into two categories: the
mathematical-algebraic approach and the explanation-based or cognitive approach. There are
three types of models in the first category: Probabilistic approach, algebraic approach and the
Stochastic Process Model. .
The cognitive-based approaches defend the active role of the jurors in the decision making
process, instead of viewing them as passive listeners. “These models incorporate jurors’ unique
experiences, knowledge, belief, and attitudes that may affect hoe they interpret the evidence and
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Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University
ultimately decide whether the defendant is guilty; the models also account for jurors’ cognitive
organization, or mental representation, of the information they heard during the trial”
(Pennington and Hastie, 1992, pg. 373). The most sophisticated and known model based on the
cognitive approach is The Story Model, according to which, the jurors integrate the evidence
into a story that they construct using the evidence learned from the trial, their personal
knowledge about similar events to the one being judged and their knowledge about what
constitutes an acceptable story, based on three main principles: Coverage, coherence and
uniqueness.
WHAT DETERMINES THE INFLUENCE OF THE MINORITY?
That a numerical minority can influence the thoughts and behaviours of members of the
majority is no longer at issue in social psychology. It is less clear when the minority will
influence the majority, who the minority will influence, and what effect will result. The field of
minority influence implies both processes of conflict and cooperation. Differences between
group members may create both intra-individual and intra-group conflict, but cooperation
toward achieving group goals is often achieved through a process of accepting or rejecting
particular persuasion attempts abounding in the group. In many of the conformity studies
described so far it was a minority group who were conforming to the majority. “Group members
that swim against the current of opinion in the group are thought to evoke conflict. In other
words, numerical minorities are commonly construed as the pebble in the majority’s shoe”
(Crano and Seyranian, 2009, pg. 336). Moscovici (1976, 1980) argued along different lines. He
claimed that Asch (1951) and others had put too much emphasis on the notion that the majority
in a group has a large influence on the minority. In his opinion, it is also possible for a minority
to influence the majority. In fact Asch agreed with Moscovici. He too felt that minority
influence did occur, and that it was potentially a more valuable issue to study - to focus on why
some people might follow minority opinion and resist group pressure. Thus, “rather than
viewing the individual or minority as a passive who may say “yes” or “no” to a system of
answers provided by a majority, these researchers studied the impact of active and persistent
minority views” (Nemeth and Kwan, 1987, pg. 789). Crano and Seyranian (2009) believe, in
fact, that innovation and social change may depend on the efforts by active minorities to
challenge the prevailing order that is frequently safeguarded by the majority. .
In a wide definition of minority influence, (assuming that the term “influence” can be defined as
a sort of movement toward the position advocated) there can be two main points: (1) that a
minority influence refers to a form of social influence that is attributed to exposure to a
consistent minority position in a group and, (2) that tends to produce private acceptance of the
views expressed by the minority. If we focus in the first point, we should consider first what we
understand by “social influence”. Moscovici and Faucheux (1972) stated that social influence is
formed by three different modalities of influence: conformity, normalization and innovation,
and each of them represent a behavioural type in the course of the evolution in conflicts and a
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Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University
mode for establishing norms and codes. Moscovici and Lage (1978) defend that “in any social
environment such negotiation, whether explicit or implicit, involves certain rules and values
without which there can be neither agreement nor disagreement. These rules and values, in turn,
are generated by a complex more general principles accepted by the social participants and
defining what is permitted and what is forbidden, what is desirable and what is undesirable” (pg.
350). .
Moving to the second point of the definition of minority influence, there is a direct and indirect
pathways to persuasion recognition that both the majority and minority may exercise influence,
the research supports the contention that majorities exercise their influence at the manifest or
public level, whereas minorities normally exercise their influence at the latent or private levels,
what makes the question arise of when and how is this influence able to reach the public level.
Influence determined by group characteristics
Tindale et al. (2002) defend that groups are seen as superior to individuals as decision-making
entities for at least two reasons. First, groups can represent a larger and more diverse set of
perspectives, constituencies, etc. Thus, they tend to be seen as more fair by providing “voice”
or input from a greater portion of the body for which the decision is made (as cited Tyler and
Smith, 1998).
“The behavior of an individual or subgroup is defined as conformist when this behavior is
determined by legitimate rules and expectations of the group, and when the individual of the
subgroup describes to judgments and opinions of the real or ideal group, irrespective of initial
differences… But, what happens when the interaction of the individuals or the subgroups results
in a conflict?” (Moscovici and Faucheux, 1972, pg. 166). The influence of a majority subgroup
has always been seen as the main social power inside a group; power that allows the members
of this majority to reward and punish with approval and disapproval. And it is due to that fact
that there exists a pressure on minorities to conform. Minority influence is said to occur when a
minority subgroup attempts to change the majority, but since these majorities are often
unconcerned about what minorities think about them, minority influence is rarely based on
normative social influence. Instead, it is usually based on informational social influence, that is,
providing the majority with new ideas, new information which leads them to re-examine their
views. In this respect, minority influence involves private acceptance (i.e. internalization),
converting the majority by convincing them that the minority's views are right.
The principal model that deals with these concepts and studies this potential minority influence
is the Minority Influence Model by Moscovici and Farcheux (1972). They introduce the
concepts of public and private acceptance by defining the terms of “Compliance” and
“Conversion”. Compliance is common in conformity studies (e.g. Asch, 1951) whereby the
participants publicly conform to the group norms but privately reject them. Conversion
involves convincing the majority that the minority views are correct. This can be achieved a
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Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University
number of different ways (e.g. consistency, flexibility, persuasion, etc.), and it usually involves
both public and private acceptance of a new view or behavior (i.e. internalization).
The authors identify four main factors that have relevance for a minority to be influential over a
majority: behavioral style, style of thinking, flexibility and compromise, and identification.
Since these factors are mainly dependent on the interaction of this minority with the majority
and they are not exclusive individual characteristics of the members of the minority, I introduce
these concepts in this section and not in the one below (Influence determined by minority
member’s characteristics).
o Behavioural Style
Moscovici defended (1969) that the most important aspect of behavioural style is the
consistency with which people hold their position. He investigated behavioural styles
(consistent / inconsistent) on minority influence in his “blue-green” studies. He showed that a
consistent minority was more successful than an inconsistent minority in changing the views of
the majority. That shows that might be very probable that being consistent and unchanging in a
view is more likely to influence the majority than if a minority is inconsistent and chops and
changes their mind. Showing consistency can make the majority more likely to think that that
the minority are convinced they are committed to their viewpoint and also that fact that they are
confronted with someone with self-confidence and dedication to take a popular stand and
refuses to back own, they may assume that he or she has a point. So, it seems that a consistent
minority disrupts established norms and creates uncertainty, doubt and conflict. This can lead to
the majority taking the minority view seriously. The majority will therefore be more likely to
question their own views.
o Style of thinking
Smith et al. (1996) argue that research has shown that if a minority can get the majority to think
about an issue and think about arguments for and against, then the minority stands a good
chance of influencing the majority. An analytic and detailed style of thinking can be more likely
to show stability and stronger arguments (at least, apparently stronger), what also makes
influence likely to be stronger (Nemeth, 1996). It is the systematic thinking/processing (Petty et
al., 1994) the one that guides to a deep analysis of the views being put forward, therefore, it is
this style of thinking (and not a superficial one) the one that can make a minority become more
influential inside the deliberating room.
o Flexibility and Compromise
Even consistency appears to be essential to develop a potential influence, it cannot be affirmed
that it is sufficient for a minority to influence a majority. Mugny and Papastamou (1980) argue
that the key is how the majority interprets consistency. If the consistent minority are seen as
inflexible, rigid, uncompromising and dogmatic, they will be unlikely to change the views of the
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Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University
majority. However, if they appear flexible and compromising, they are likely to be seen as less
extreme, as more moderate, cooperative and reasonable. As a result, they will have a better
chance of changing majority views.
o Identification
People tend to identity with people they see similar to themselves. Research indicates that if the
majority identifies with the minority, then they can be more likely to take the views of the
minority seriously and change their own views, or at least, consider changing them, in line with
those of the minority. As an example, Maass et al. (1982) introduce showed that a gay minority
arguing for gay rights had less influence on a straight majority than a straight minority arguing
for gay rights. The non-gay majority identified with the non-gay minority. They tended to see
the gay minority as different from themselves, as self-interested and concerned with promoting
their own particular cause.
It is also interesting to investigate other theories that can contribute to the study of minority
influence. Shelton, T. (2006) uses the group decision-making theory to analyse the jury decision
making process in order to improve deliberation. This author He summarizes that especially
“successful” groups, have certain characteristics: small size, purpose, identification, interaction,
and accepted behavior. Thus, these characteristics may affect, in correlation or not with the
other factors mentioned in the paper, on how influential a minority can be.
A larger group has more information available to them, but it also should bring consensus
among the potential for more divergent opinions. That is, minorities will have to deal with a
bigger majority group, and, even the information available is also bigger, the persuasion will
probably have to be higher. Smaller groups will entail a smaller minority but also, less divergent
opinions to deal with. It is also important for a group to share a purpose, a “decision task”
(Shelton, 2006; Hinsz, 1990) and also a feeling of belonging to the group. Minority groups that
have this membership feeling even though their point of view disagrees with the majority ones
and that are aware of the fact that the decision task has to be solved as a group, will be more
likely to try to expose their arguments and persuade the majority group to analyse their
arguments and change their minds. If there is not a feeling or an interest, no efforts to change
the majority view will be made, what implies that there will be not effective interaction either.
Finally, Shelton (2006) argues that successful group integration requires a willingness on the
part of the individual members to permit their behaviour to be guided by the expectations of the
group. Groups are less successful when members do not rise above selfishness and personal
agendas and, in fact, demonstrate selfish and defensive behaviour (as cited Simon, 1997). If a
minority group is tolerant and considers seriously the majority views and does not exercise an
“authoritarian” and sceptical arguing way, the predisposition of this majority group will
probably also increase and that will facilitate successful interaction. Like Diamond (2003)
affirms: “the jurors who participate more during deliberations also tend to have better
comprehension levels and are more influential on the jury than their fellow jurors” (pg. 152).
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Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University
Influence determined by minority member’s characteristics
The individual characteristics or personal traits of each member that is part of a minority
constitute maybe the main factor that can seriously determine the level of influence of this
minority. But contemporary jury research rarely examines personal traits related with jury
decision making. “A personal trait refers to a relatively stable pattern of thought, emotion, and
behaviour that describes “how people act in general” ” (Funder, 1997, pg. 108). Thus, they
appear to be basically decisive in how a person will manage a situation.
Marcus, Lyons and Guyton (2000) published a study in which jury decision making was
examined by the Five Factor Model (FFM). The experiment consisted in the administration of a
FFM measure to members of eight deliberating juries from real cases (criminal and civil cases).
The FFM identifies five main traits: Openness to Experience, Neuroticism, Extraversion,
Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. Openness to Experience is referred to the search of new
experiences; Neuroticism is referred to the emotional stability and the adjustment level of a
person; Extraversion is related to the level of activity sociability of a person; Conscientiousness
refers to the refers to how self-disciplined, deter- mined, deliberate, and dutiful a person is; and
Agreeableness represents a person’s tendency to be cooperative and affable. .
The researchers found that Jurors reporting high levels of Conscientiousness were most likely to
report being influenced by other jurors, whereas those reporting high levels of Openness were
least likely to report being influenced (Clark et al., 2007).Conscientious individuals are dutiful
(McCrae & Costa, 1990), and “a primary duty of jurors is to attend to and consider the opinions
of the other jurors. Because individuals high in openness to experience are resistant to social
pressures, this dimension is negatively correlated with receptiveness to influence and it may be
that individuals who are willing to hang a jury are high in openness to experience” (Marcus,
Lyons and Guyton, 2000). We can observe that the fact of listening to other members’ opinions
and taking them into consideration appears again as a flattering of an influence. On the contrary,
people closed-minded and resistant to consider their points of view are less likely to be affected
from an external influence, like a minority influence. .
The authors also stated that one decisive trait to understand jury deliberations was Extraversion.
They found that the individuals scoring higher on this personal trait were more likely to be
perceived as dominant by the others and were also more likely to be selected as a foreperson
inside the deliberating room. It also correlated positively with longer jury deliberation times.
“Those scoring high on measures of Extraversion prefer contact with others, enjoy a high level
of activity, and tend to be happy” ” (Marcus, Lyons and Guyton, 2000). It also correlated
positively with longer jury deliberation times. Individuals of a minority that are sociable and
outgoing will probably exert a higher influence. .
Clark et al., (2007) introduce another interesting concept named “Need for Cognition” and it is
described as “an individual’s tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive endeavours”
(Clark et al., 2007, as cited Cacciopo, Petty, Feinstein, and Jarvis, 1996, pg. 197). Even this
9
Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University
concept is rarely described as a personality trait, it can be considered an individual characteristic
related with the stable personality of the person. People that scored high in need for Cognition
were more likely to be influenced by the information presented to them and its quality and
format. So the way in how minorities present their arguments (the messages, the attitude, etc.).
can become a strong persuasive method. As Crano and Seyranian (2009) state: “Minorities
persuade by stimulating curiosity. They raise questions in the minds of their listeners regarding
the how and why of their opinions” (pg. 337). I am going to analyse these concepts again in the
next section.
The group decision-making theory has also some interesting contributions related to individual
characteristics. (Shelton, 2006) argues that the feeling of membership to a group does not
guarantee effective decision making. The characteristics of the members of the group impact
both the process of decision making and the actual decision made. Several studies (like Simons
1997; Visher 1987) identify juror characteristics that are expected to influence jury
deliberations. We are talking about gender, defending that men normally participate more than
women; age is also related. Middle-aged jurors participate more than older and younger jurors.
Also a higher status and education imply more participation inside the jury room. Related to
race, white people participate more other minorities and finally, foremen participate more and
also have more control of the direction of the group discussion. Thus, any element that promotes
interaction and participation will be favourable for the influence from the minority.
Influence determined by situational characteristics
Inside the ambit of situational characteristics, there are not only included contextual elements,
like can be considered Pretrial publicity, the type of evidence, the message of the speakers, the
deliberating process itself, or room arrangements, but also characteristics of the members as
personal beliefs, previous experiences to the trial (related, similar or not to it) or the level of
stereotyping. The interrelation and the interaction of these several factors create an influential
situation that becomes different in each jury decision-making process. .
Jurors have to deal with multiple information and sometimes overlapping legal issues in one
trial. This trial complexity usually decreases the ability and the interest to understand the issues
in the trial and also the confidence of the jurors in their own verdict (Levett et al., 2005). It is
not sufficient for a minority influence to take place if, even the minority group is compromised
and motivated, there is not a predisposition of the majority group for becoming involved in a
proper deliberating process basically because of the difficulties of the members to comprehend
the trial issues. Furthermore, there exist other trial elements that can affect this influence. Levett
et al., (2005) comment several aspects like the Eyewitness evidence, saying that members of the
jury are usually less likely to convict a defendant of a crime if there is only circumstantial
evidence and not an eyewitness evidence that identifies him/her; Confession evidence is
commented as well, stating that those cases that contained a confession had higher conviction
rates, that is that jurors assigned more weigh to confession evidence than to other types of
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Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University
evidence. Characteristics of the defendant are more decisive for the jurors’ decision making
process than they appear to be. Physical attractiveness, white race, high socioeconomic status
and similarity to the jurors’ (ethnicity, beliefs, background, shared experiences or likelihood to
them, etc.) have a positive effect on jurors’ general impressions. For example, Pozzulo (2010)
states that women are more likely to convict in rape cases and provide harsher sentences than
men (as cited Scroggs, 1976). All these factors can also be applied to the minority members’
characteristics and, on the whole, create and stereotyping bias that can make the influence of
this minority fluctuate to a success (in case that minority member’s characteristics are
considered positively) or to an inexistent influence. .
The Pretrial publicity is other factor that can also favour the appearance of bias. Its main
consequence is that jurors bias new evidence in favour of their current leading party
(prosecution or defense) rather than evaluating this information for its actual probative
properties. Hope, Memon, and McGeorge (2004) postulate that depending on the trial and
legislative reins on the press within a particular jurisdiction, publicity may reach potential jurors
in a combination of extended, graphic, emotional, and judgmental communications about the
defendant, victims, and key witnesses. Jurors forming their opinions from this pretrial publicity
will probaly evaluate new information in a way that is favourable to that initial opinion, so this
opinion will become consequently more resistant to change, and decision-makers may be more
likely to view new ambiguous information as confirming previous beliefs or opinions and are
more likely to dismiss information disconfirming initial opinions (Hope, Memon, and
McGeorge, 2004; Ross & Anderson, 1982). .
The Leniency Contract Model (Crano and Chen, 1998) studies some of the situational factors
cited above: characteristics of the speakers’ messages, personal beliefs and response patterns.
Crano and Seyranian (2009) state that the presence for a strong held belief has clear
implications has clear implications for resistance (as cited Knowles & Linn, 2004). But this
resistance depends also on the message topic: a minority message of high relevance or vested
interest that argues for a negative personal outcome (introducing the Euro) will be resisted, and
people will invest more effort to understand the majority’s message. Conversely, people exert
more cognitive effort to process a minority message that is low-in vested interest and outcome
involvement (e.g., euthanasia) (Crano and Seyranian 2009, pg. 339 as cited Crano, 1995)
Arguably, some message topics and/or social issues such juror deliberation topics may involve
weakly formed attitudes. As such, in cases of low vested interest or attitude importance, people
may be convinced by the minority because they have weakly formed attitudes. That is, they
have little to defend and do not have much to lose in forming their attitudes, especially when
presented with a strong message. Accordingly, by virtue of the attention it elicits, a minority
source may be more influential than a majority, and may be capable of provoking immediate
focal change. This is precisely what Martin and Hewstone (2003; Experiment 2) showed. In the
case of attitude formation (euthanasia), strong messages delivered by a minority source were
more influential than a majority source in eliciting immediate focal change. Furthermore,
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Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University
attitudes formed as a result of minority influence appeared more resistant to subsequent
persuasion pressures, more likely to persist, and better to predict behaviour than attitudes
formed as a result of majority persuasion (Martin et al., 2003). .
The perceptions that the jurors have of their own judgements also may be affected by a minority
influence. On one side, subjective issues, concerning choices perceived as involving personal
preferences or palate, not verifiable, right or wrong judgments, are more likely to be influenced
by other points of view. On the other side, on objective issues (or perceived as objective), where
the perception or belief defends that there is a right or wrong position. Many social issues are
probably perceived to be objective are followed by objective judgments (or perceived as them),
that “are more likely to be vested and held with some degree of conviction or passion. As such,
these judgments may prove more difficult to change; however, once changed, the changes are
more likely to persist, and to motivate attitude-consistent action” (Crano and Seyranian, 2009,
pg. 347).
Finally, it is curious to mention that room arrangements, like simple issues as the shape of the
table, may also have an effect in the potential influence of a minority. Hall (1971) reported that
it is helpful for groups to be seated in a circle or other democratically arranged manner because
it results in less conflict than across-the-table discussion, encourages eye contact among those at
the table, and thus encourages discourse among more members of the group, promoting
openness, equality of status, and security. In case of the presence of a rectangular shaped table,
“It is possible that individuals seeking a leadership position in the jury recognize the power
found in sitting at the ends of the rectangular table and intentionally take those positions”
(Shelton, T., 2006, pg. 715).
CONCLUSION
Minority influence can be exerted in several different ways and its strength and efficiency
depends on diverse factors. If the influence is considered from the side of group characteristics,
minorities depend on their relation with the majority group: being consistent and having a solid
argument, an analytic style of thinking, flexible and tolerant will help the minority group to be
persuasive. Small, united and task-involved groups will also be easier to be influenced by a
member from the minority. On the individuals’ characteristics field, sociable and outgoing
members that have to deal with open-minded majorities will create an easier influencing
situation. Also characteristics that promote participation, such as middle-aged, male, white
raced jurors, with higher status and education, will make influence easier. Finally, focused on
situational factors, the type of evidence and the manner in which it is presented combined with
previous stereotypes of the jurors and the pretrial publicity can affect negatively the minority
influence. Nevertheless, strong and powerful messages to weakly formed attitudes, also
involving several subjective judgements like the ones required inside a jury room, and not
jerarchich room arrangements will facilitate, in conjuction with the rest of elements, the
influence of the minority.
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Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University
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Current perspectives in crime and psychology. Jury Decision Making

  • 1. Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Current perspectives in crime and psychology. Sarah van Mastrigt Teresa Gracia Bachelor Degree 2011-2012 Aarhus University
  • 2. 1 Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University INDEX INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………... JURY AND JUROR DECISION MAKING ………………………… Models of Juror Decision Making ………………………………………. WHAT DETERMINES THE INFLUENCE OF . THE MINORITY? ……………………………………………………… Influence determined by group characteristics.......................................... Influence determined by individual members’ characteristics ................. Influence determined by situational characteristics.................................. CONLCUSION................................................................................. REFERENCES.................................................................................
  • 3. 2 Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University “The ideal juror is one who can dispassionately listen to the trial evidence and is savvy enough to render a verdict based on rational and prejudice-free thought processes. The real juror, on the other hand, is not the blank slate that the judicial system prefers and presumes to exist.” (Winter, R. J. and Greene, E., 2008; pg. 741). It is not far from reality to believe that a big part of the society considers jury members as people who has some sort of special characteristics that make them more suitable or capable to take the serious decisions that are supposed to be taken inside a jury room. Since it is commonly known that the election of jury members is made randomly among all the citizens (over a determined age) it shouldn’t be really trustable to affirm that are special abilities, or factors, the ones that make these people to be elected. However, they do are certain individual, collective and contextual characteristics that highly influence the way the decisions are taken inside a jury room. So, actually, it is true, in a certain way, that people from the jury has characteristics that can affect in several different ways the jury decision making process, the only fact is that not determined people but anybody can influence in a special way inside a jury room. The focus of this paper is related to some of these influences that take part in the jury decision making process, concretely the called “Minority Influence”. I personally consider interesting to investigate this topic, mainly, because minorities are not normally considered really “powerful” in real life, but they can be influential in several ways depending on different factors, though we have to remain in a realistic point of view, bearing in mind that situations like the ones we can observe in movies such as “Twelve angry men” (1957) or “The runaway jury” (2003) are not really probable. Thus, my proposal is an analysis in this paper about the following aim research question: What factors promote minority influence in the jury room? To best answer my question, I am first going to summarize the general proceeding o Jury Decision Making, to clarify the standard process in which how juries and jurors make decisions and I am also going to name briefly what are the main juror decision making models, but I am going only to describe one of the types since the rest are not really essential to discuss the topic of my paper. And second, I organize the paper around three types of factors that determine the influence of the minority: (1) group characteristics, (2) Minority members’ characteristics and (3) situational characteristics. To perform this, I am principally going to focus the study of each factor around different models/theories; I am also going to introduce other factors that can influence them more direct or indirectly. Finally, I am going to conclude the paper analysis with the most important concepts that are closer to give an answer to my aim research question.
  • 4. 3 Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University JURY AND JUROR DECISION MAKING Winter, R. J. and Greene, E. (2008) start their chapter Juror Decision-making arguing: “In any jury trial, empanelled members must sift through conflicting arguments and evidence presentations and a series of exhaustive jury instructions that frequently involve concepts and language unfamiliar to most laypeople. Then, during their deliberations, jurors are asked to recall vast amounts of trial evidence, expected to understand and apply their instructions, and ultimately, to decide on an “appropriate” verdict” (Handbook of applied cognition, pg. 739). Diamond et al. (1989) states that the basic purpose of a jury is to make a final decision on guilt, liability, and/or damage awards. The jury evaluates evidence presented during court proceedings and has to apply legal rules to the facts as those facts and the law have been presented to them. Research about jury decision making has traditionally been done within two contexts: the group decision and the individual juror decision. A typical jury moves through three stages during deliberation (Levett et al., 2005; Stasser, 1992): orientation, open conflict and reconciliation. Orientation phase takes place when jurors elect who is going to be their foreperson and when they discuss the procedures and the general trial issues. . Deliberation can normally follow two different ways. On one side we can find the denominated verdict given which consists of beginning the deliberation by taking an initial public vote and then orienting the discussion around that vote. On the other side we find the named evidence driven, and we talk about focusing on the evidence presented at trial as the way to start the deliberation and jurors try to create the best story accounting for all of the evidence. In the stage of open conflict, jurors attempt to persuade their fellow jurors to reach a verdict (Costanzo, 2003; Stasser 1992). Reconciliation arrives as the final stage when, after the jury reaches a final verdict, they try to make sure that every member is satisfied with the verdict. In case unanimity is required, the decision making processed used by unanimous juries might differ from the processes used by majority rule juries, where votes are taken earlier and spending more time and the use of normative influence is usually present. Models of Juror Decision Making Most of the literature on jury decision making has been focused on how the decisions are made by jurors from an individual point of view, even though juries make decisions as groups. The prevailing models of juror decision making are generally classified into two categories: the mathematical-algebraic approach and the explanation-based or cognitive approach. There are three types of models in the first category: Probabilistic approach, algebraic approach and the Stochastic Process Model. . The cognitive-based approaches defend the active role of the jurors in the decision making process, instead of viewing them as passive listeners. “These models incorporate jurors’ unique experiences, knowledge, belief, and attitudes that may affect hoe they interpret the evidence and
  • 5. 4 Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University ultimately decide whether the defendant is guilty; the models also account for jurors’ cognitive organization, or mental representation, of the information they heard during the trial” (Pennington and Hastie, 1992, pg. 373). The most sophisticated and known model based on the cognitive approach is The Story Model, according to which, the jurors integrate the evidence into a story that they construct using the evidence learned from the trial, their personal knowledge about similar events to the one being judged and their knowledge about what constitutes an acceptable story, based on three main principles: Coverage, coherence and uniqueness. WHAT DETERMINES THE INFLUENCE OF THE MINORITY? That a numerical minority can influence the thoughts and behaviours of members of the majority is no longer at issue in social psychology. It is less clear when the minority will influence the majority, who the minority will influence, and what effect will result. The field of minority influence implies both processes of conflict and cooperation. Differences between group members may create both intra-individual and intra-group conflict, but cooperation toward achieving group goals is often achieved through a process of accepting or rejecting particular persuasion attempts abounding in the group. In many of the conformity studies described so far it was a minority group who were conforming to the majority. “Group members that swim against the current of opinion in the group are thought to evoke conflict. In other words, numerical minorities are commonly construed as the pebble in the majority’s shoe” (Crano and Seyranian, 2009, pg. 336). Moscovici (1976, 1980) argued along different lines. He claimed that Asch (1951) and others had put too much emphasis on the notion that the majority in a group has a large influence on the minority. In his opinion, it is also possible for a minority to influence the majority. In fact Asch agreed with Moscovici. He too felt that minority influence did occur, and that it was potentially a more valuable issue to study - to focus on why some people might follow minority opinion and resist group pressure. Thus, “rather than viewing the individual or minority as a passive who may say “yes” or “no” to a system of answers provided by a majority, these researchers studied the impact of active and persistent minority views” (Nemeth and Kwan, 1987, pg. 789). Crano and Seyranian (2009) believe, in fact, that innovation and social change may depend on the efforts by active minorities to challenge the prevailing order that is frequently safeguarded by the majority. . In a wide definition of minority influence, (assuming that the term “influence” can be defined as a sort of movement toward the position advocated) there can be two main points: (1) that a minority influence refers to a form of social influence that is attributed to exposure to a consistent minority position in a group and, (2) that tends to produce private acceptance of the views expressed by the minority. If we focus in the first point, we should consider first what we understand by “social influence”. Moscovici and Faucheux (1972) stated that social influence is formed by three different modalities of influence: conformity, normalization and innovation, and each of them represent a behavioural type in the course of the evolution in conflicts and a
  • 6. 5 Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University mode for establishing norms and codes. Moscovici and Lage (1978) defend that “in any social environment such negotiation, whether explicit or implicit, involves certain rules and values without which there can be neither agreement nor disagreement. These rules and values, in turn, are generated by a complex more general principles accepted by the social participants and defining what is permitted and what is forbidden, what is desirable and what is undesirable” (pg. 350). . Moving to the second point of the definition of minority influence, there is a direct and indirect pathways to persuasion recognition that both the majority and minority may exercise influence, the research supports the contention that majorities exercise their influence at the manifest or public level, whereas minorities normally exercise their influence at the latent or private levels, what makes the question arise of when and how is this influence able to reach the public level. Influence determined by group characteristics Tindale et al. (2002) defend that groups are seen as superior to individuals as decision-making entities for at least two reasons. First, groups can represent a larger and more diverse set of perspectives, constituencies, etc. Thus, they tend to be seen as more fair by providing “voice” or input from a greater portion of the body for which the decision is made (as cited Tyler and Smith, 1998). “The behavior of an individual or subgroup is defined as conformist when this behavior is determined by legitimate rules and expectations of the group, and when the individual of the subgroup describes to judgments and opinions of the real or ideal group, irrespective of initial differences… But, what happens when the interaction of the individuals or the subgroups results in a conflict?” (Moscovici and Faucheux, 1972, pg. 166). The influence of a majority subgroup has always been seen as the main social power inside a group; power that allows the members of this majority to reward and punish with approval and disapproval. And it is due to that fact that there exists a pressure on minorities to conform. Minority influence is said to occur when a minority subgroup attempts to change the majority, but since these majorities are often unconcerned about what minorities think about them, minority influence is rarely based on normative social influence. Instead, it is usually based on informational social influence, that is, providing the majority with new ideas, new information which leads them to re-examine their views. In this respect, minority influence involves private acceptance (i.e. internalization), converting the majority by convincing them that the minority's views are right. The principal model that deals with these concepts and studies this potential minority influence is the Minority Influence Model by Moscovici and Farcheux (1972). They introduce the concepts of public and private acceptance by defining the terms of “Compliance” and “Conversion”. Compliance is common in conformity studies (e.g. Asch, 1951) whereby the participants publicly conform to the group norms but privately reject them. Conversion involves convincing the majority that the minority views are correct. This can be achieved a
  • 7. 6 Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University number of different ways (e.g. consistency, flexibility, persuasion, etc.), and it usually involves both public and private acceptance of a new view or behavior (i.e. internalization). The authors identify four main factors that have relevance for a minority to be influential over a majority: behavioral style, style of thinking, flexibility and compromise, and identification. Since these factors are mainly dependent on the interaction of this minority with the majority and they are not exclusive individual characteristics of the members of the minority, I introduce these concepts in this section and not in the one below (Influence determined by minority member’s characteristics). o Behavioural Style Moscovici defended (1969) that the most important aspect of behavioural style is the consistency with which people hold their position. He investigated behavioural styles (consistent / inconsistent) on minority influence in his “blue-green” studies. He showed that a consistent minority was more successful than an inconsistent minority in changing the views of the majority. That shows that might be very probable that being consistent and unchanging in a view is more likely to influence the majority than if a minority is inconsistent and chops and changes their mind. Showing consistency can make the majority more likely to think that that the minority are convinced they are committed to their viewpoint and also that fact that they are confronted with someone with self-confidence and dedication to take a popular stand and refuses to back own, they may assume that he or she has a point. So, it seems that a consistent minority disrupts established norms and creates uncertainty, doubt and conflict. This can lead to the majority taking the minority view seriously. The majority will therefore be more likely to question their own views. o Style of thinking Smith et al. (1996) argue that research has shown that if a minority can get the majority to think about an issue and think about arguments for and against, then the minority stands a good chance of influencing the majority. An analytic and detailed style of thinking can be more likely to show stability and stronger arguments (at least, apparently stronger), what also makes influence likely to be stronger (Nemeth, 1996). It is the systematic thinking/processing (Petty et al., 1994) the one that guides to a deep analysis of the views being put forward, therefore, it is this style of thinking (and not a superficial one) the one that can make a minority become more influential inside the deliberating room. o Flexibility and Compromise Even consistency appears to be essential to develop a potential influence, it cannot be affirmed that it is sufficient for a minority to influence a majority. Mugny and Papastamou (1980) argue that the key is how the majority interprets consistency. If the consistent minority are seen as inflexible, rigid, uncompromising and dogmatic, they will be unlikely to change the views of the
  • 8. 7 Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University majority. However, if they appear flexible and compromising, they are likely to be seen as less extreme, as more moderate, cooperative and reasonable. As a result, they will have a better chance of changing majority views. o Identification People tend to identity with people they see similar to themselves. Research indicates that if the majority identifies with the minority, then they can be more likely to take the views of the minority seriously and change their own views, or at least, consider changing them, in line with those of the minority. As an example, Maass et al. (1982) introduce showed that a gay minority arguing for gay rights had less influence on a straight majority than a straight minority arguing for gay rights. The non-gay majority identified with the non-gay minority. They tended to see the gay minority as different from themselves, as self-interested and concerned with promoting their own particular cause. It is also interesting to investigate other theories that can contribute to the study of minority influence. Shelton, T. (2006) uses the group decision-making theory to analyse the jury decision making process in order to improve deliberation. This author He summarizes that especially “successful” groups, have certain characteristics: small size, purpose, identification, interaction, and accepted behavior. Thus, these characteristics may affect, in correlation or not with the other factors mentioned in the paper, on how influential a minority can be. A larger group has more information available to them, but it also should bring consensus among the potential for more divergent opinions. That is, minorities will have to deal with a bigger majority group, and, even the information available is also bigger, the persuasion will probably have to be higher. Smaller groups will entail a smaller minority but also, less divergent opinions to deal with. It is also important for a group to share a purpose, a “decision task” (Shelton, 2006; Hinsz, 1990) and also a feeling of belonging to the group. Minority groups that have this membership feeling even though their point of view disagrees with the majority ones and that are aware of the fact that the decision task has to be solved as a group, will be more likely to try to expose their arguments and persuade the majority group to analyse their arguments and change their minds. If there is not a feeling or an interest, no efforts to change the majority view will be made, what implies that there will be not effective interaction either. Finally, Shelton (2006) argues that successful group integration requires a willingness on the part of the individual members to permit their behaviour to be guided by the expectations of the group. Groups are less successful when members do not rise above selfishness and personal agendas and, in fact, demonstrate selfish and defensive behaviour (as cited Simon, 1997). If a minority group is tolerant and considers seriously the majority views and does not exercise an “authoritarian” and sceptical arguing way, the predisposition of this majority group will probably also increase and that will facilitate successful interaction. Like Diamond (2003) affirms: “the jurors who participate more during deliberations also tend to have better comprehension levels and are more influential on the jury than their fellow jurors” (pg. 152).
  • 9. 8 Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University Influence determined by minority member’s characteristics The individual characteristics or personal traits of each member that is part of a minority constitute maybe the main factor that can seriously determine the level of influence of this minority. But contemporary jury research rarely examines personal traits related with jury decision making. “A personal trait refers to a relatively stable pattern of thought, emotion, and behaviour that describes “how people act in general” ” (Funder, 1997, pg. 108). Thus, they appear to be basically decisive in how a person will manage a situation. Marcus, Lyons and Guyton (2000) published a study in which jury decision making was examined by the Five Factor Model (FFM). The experiment consisted in the administration of a FFM measure to members of eight deliberating juries from real cases (criminal and civil cases). The FFM identifies five main traits: Openness to Experience, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. Openness to Experience is referred to the search of new experiences; Neuroticism is referred to the emotional stability and the adjustment level of a person; Extraversion is related to the level of activity sociability of a person; Conscientiousness refers to the refers to how self-disciplined, deter- mined, deliberate, and dutiful a person is; and Agreeableness represents a person’s tendency to be cooperative and affable. . The researchers found that Jurors reporting high levels of Conscientiousness were most likely to report being influenced by other jurors, whereas those reporting high levels of Openness were least likely to report being influenced (Clark et al., 2007).Conscientious individuals are dutiful (McCrae & Costa, 1990), and “a primary duty of jurors is to attend to and consider the opinions of the other jurors. Because individuals high in openness to experience are resistant to social pressures, this dimension is negatively correlated with receptiveness to influence and it may be that individuals who are willing to hang a jury are high in openness to experience” (Marcus, Lyons and Guyton, 2000). We can observe that the fact of listening to other members’ opinions and taking them into consideration appears again as a flattering of an influence. On the contrary, people closed-minded and resistant to consider their points of view are less likely to be affected from an external influence, like a minority influence. . The authors also stated that one decisive trait to understand jury deliberations was Extraversion. They found that the individuals scoring higher on this personal trait were more likely to be perceived as dominant by the others and were also more likely to be selected as a foreperson inside the deliberating room. It also correlated positively with longer jury deliberation times. “Those scoring high on measures of Extraversion prefer contact with others, enjoy a high level of activity, and tend to be happy” ” (Marcus, Lyons and Guyton, 2000). It also correlated positively with longer jury deliberation times. Individuals of a minority that are sociable and outgoing will probably exert a higher influence. . Clark et al., (2007) introduce another interesting concept named “Need for Cognition” and it is described as “an individual’s tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive endeavours” (Clark et al., 2007, as cited Cacciopo, Petty, Feinstein, and Jarvis, 1996, pg. 197). Even this
  • 10. 9 Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University concept is rarely described as a personality trait, it can be considered an individual characteristic related with the stable personality of the person. People that scored high in need for Cognition were more likely to be influenced by the information presented to them and its quality and format. So the way in how minorities present their arguments (the messages, the attitude, etc.). can become a strong persuasive method. As Crano and Seyranian (2009) state: “Minorities persuade by stimulating curiosity. They raise questions in the minds of their listeners regarding the how and why of their opinions” (pg. 337). I am going to analyse these concepts again in the next section. The group decision-making theory has also some interesting contributions related to individual characteristics. (Shelton, 2006) argues that the feeling of membership to a group does not guarantee effective decision making. The characteristics of the members of the group impact both the process of decision making and the actual decision made. Several studies (like Simons 1997; Visher 1987) identify juror characteristics that are expected to influence jury deliberations. We are talking about gender, defending that men normally participate more than women; age is also related. Middle-aged jurors participate more than older and younger jurors. Also a higher status and education imply more participation inside the jury room. Related to race, white people participate more other minorities and finally, foremen participate more and also have more control of the direction of the group discussion. Thus, any element that promotes interaction and participation will be favourable for the influence from the minority. Influence determined by situational characteristics Inside the ambit of situational characteristics, there are not only included contextual elements, like can be considered Pretrial publicity, the type of evidence, the message of the speakers, the deliberating process itself, or room arrangements, but also characteristics of the members as personal beliefs, previous experiences to the trial (related, similar or not to it) or the level of stereotyping. The interrelation and the interaction of these several factors create an influential situation that becomes different in each jury decision-making process. . Jurors have to deal with multiple information and sometimes overlapping legal issues in one trial. This trial complexity usually decreases the ability and the interest to understand the issues in the trial and also the confidence of the jurors in their own verdict (Levett et al., 2005). It is not sufficient for a minority influence to take place if, even the minority group is compromised and motivated, there is not a predisposition of the majority group for becoming involved in a proper deliberating process basically because of the difficulties of the members to comprehend the trial issues. Furthermore, there exist other trial elements that can affect this influence. Levett et al., (2005) comment several aspects like the Eyewitness evidence, saying that members of the jury are usually less likely to convict a defendant of a crime if there is only circumstantial evidence and not an eyewitness evidence that identifies him/her; Confession evidence is commented as well, stating that those cases that contained a confession had higher conviction rates, that is that jurors assigned more weigh to confession evidence than to other types of
  • 11. 10 Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University evidence. Characteristics of the defendant are more decisive for the jurors’ decision making process than they appear to be. Physical attractiveness, white race, high socioeconomic status and similarity to the jurors’ (ethnicity, beliefs, background, shared experiences or likelihood to them, etc.) have a positive effect on jurors’ general impressions. For example, Pozzulo (2010) states that women are more likely to convict in rape cases and provide harsher sentences than men (as cited Scroggs, 1976). All these factors can also be applied to the minority members’ characteristics and, on the whole, create and stereotyping bias that can make the influence of this minority fluctuate to a success (in case that minority member’s characteristics are considered positively) or to an inexistent influence. . The Pretrial publicity is other factor that can also favour the appearance of bias. Its main consequence is that jurors bias new evidence in favour of their current leading party (prosecution or defense) rather than evaluating this information for its actual probative properties. Hope, Memon, and McGeorge (2004) postulate that depending on the trial and legislative reins on the press within a particular jurisdiction, publicity may reach potential jurors in a combination of extended, graphic, emotional, and judgmental communications about the defendant, victims, and key witnesses. Jurors forming their opinions from this pretrial publicity will probaly evaluate new information in a way that is favourable to that initial opinion, so this opinion will become consequently more resistant to change, and decision-makers may be more likely to view new ambiguous information as confirming previous beliefs or opinions and are more likely to dismiss information disconfirming initial opinions (Hope, Memon, and McGeorge, 2004; Ross & Anderson, 1982). . The Leniency Contract Model (Crano and Chen, 1998) studies some of the situational factors cited above: characteristics of the speakers’ messages, personal beliefs and response patterns. Crano and Seyranian (2009) state that the presence for a strong held belief has clear implications has clear implications for resistance (as cited Knowles & Linn, 2004). But this resistance depends also on the message topic: a minority message of high relevance or vested interest that argues for a negative personal outcome (introducing the Euro) will be resisted, and people will invest more effort to understand the majority’s message. Conversely, people exert more cognitive effort to process a minority message that is low-in vested interest and outcome involvement (e.g., euthanasia) (Crano and Seyranian 2009, pg. 339 as cited Crano, 1995) Arguably, some message topics and/or social issues such juror deliberation topics may involve weakly formed attitudes. As such, in cases of low vested interest or attitude importance, people may be convinced by the minority because they have weakly formed attitudes. That is, they have little to defend and do not have much to lose in forming their attitudes, especially when presented with a strong message. Accordingly, by virtue of the attention it elicits, a minority source may be more influential than a majority, and may be capable of provoking immediate focal change. This is precisely what Martin and Hewstone (2003; Experiment 2) showed. In the case of attitude formation (euthanasia), strong messages delivered by a minority source were more influential than a majority source in eliciting immediate focal change. Furthermore,
  • 12. 11 Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University attitudes formed as a result of minority influence appeared more resistant to subsequent persuasion pressures, more likely to persist, and better to predict behaviour than attitudes formed as a result of majority persuasion (Martin et al., 2003). . The perceptions that the jurors have of their own judgements also may be affected by a minority influence. On one side, subjective issues, concerning choices perceived as involving personal preferences or palate, not verifiable, right or wrong judgments, are more likely to be influenced by other points of view. On the other side, on objective issues (or perceived as objective), where the perception or belief defends that there is a right or wrong position. Many social issues are probably perceived to be objective are followed by objective judgments (or perceived as them), that “are more likely to be vested and held with some degree of conviction or passion. As such, these judgments may prove more difficult to change; however, once changed, the changes are more likely to persist, and to motivate attitude-consistent action” (Crano and Seyranian, 2009, pg. 347). Finally, it is curious to mention that room arrangements, like simple issues as the shape of the table, may also have an effect in the potential influence of a minority. Hall (1971) reported that it is helpful for groups to be seated in a circle or other democratically arranged manner because it results in less conflict than across-the-table discussion, encourages eye contact among those at the table, and thus encourages discourse among more members of the group, promoting openness, equality of status, and security. In case of the presence of a rectangular shaped table, “It is possible that individuals seeking a leadership position in the jury recognize the power found in sitting at the ends of the rectangular table and intentionally take those positions” (Shelton, T., 2006, pg. 715). CONCLUSION Minority influence can be exerted in several different ways and its strength and efficiency depends on diverse factors. If the influence is considered from the side of group characteristics, minorities depend on their relation with the majority group: being consistent and having a solid argument, an analytic style of thinking, flexible and tolerant will help the minority group to be persuasive. Small, united and task-involved groups will also be easier to be influenced by a member from the minority. On the individuals’ characteristics field, sociable and outgoing members that have to deal with open-minded majorities will create an easier influencing situation. Also characteristics that promote participation, such as middle-aged, male, white raced jurors, with higher status and education, will make influence easier. Finally, focused on situational factors, the type of evidence and the manner in which it is presented combined with previous stereotypes of the jurors and the pretrial publicity can affect negatively the minority influence. Nevertheless, strong and powerful messages to weakly formed attitudes, also involving several subjective judgements like the ones required inside a jury room, and not jerarchich room arrangements will facilitate, in conjuction with the rest of elements, the influence of the minority.
  • 13. 12 Jury Decision Making. The power of the minority Aarhus University REFERENCES