Originally published by Douglas Keene.
You may not think of Lemony Snicket as an expert on voir dire but he may have a point with the quote illustrating this post when it comes to voir dire.
In this post, we are combining four separate research articles to give you multiple examples of how academic research can assist you in thinking as you complete voir dire.
Want people with more empathy for others?
We’ve written before about the power of a good story to transport the reader (or the watcher since it works with videos and films as well). When it comes to voir dire, new research tells us that people who read have more empathy for others and are thus, more capable of taking the other’s point of view. The important thing is that they are reading narrative fiction as opposed to non-fiction. The researchers say the process of entering a fictional world allows the reader to have more empathy than a non-reader or a non-fiction reader (citation below the post) would have.
And on another (not voir dire related) note, a new study from Yale University tells us those who read more than 3.5 hours a week live “a full 23 months” longer than those who do not read—so you may want to stop and buy a book once you’re done reading here! (Just for your edification, we’ve also included the citation to this article at the bottom of the post.)
On self-appointed experts in the jury pool…
We’ve also written about the self-appointed expert who is not really an expert (but thinks they are) who lands on your jury. Here’s some new research that explains why being over-confident can lead to poor decision-making (and why you want to read our earlier posts on this topic to teach jurors how to “de-throne” that self-appointed expert). The researchers in this new study say that when you are exceptionally confident in your knowledge, you are less able to carefully think through your decisions and so you make bad decisions.
It is like the group agreement that undermined decisions about the Bay of Pigs invasion during the Kennedy administration. Follow the preceding link for more information on how JFK changed decision-making processes after that horrible lesson in bad decision-making.
What happens to the disempowered when they become a juror?
Finally, here’s a fairly creepy study (summarized impeccably by Alex Fradera over at BPS Research Digest). The study examines how someone given “high power over another” on a temporary basis can result in sexualized aggression (like sending sexualized text messages to a co-worker whom you find attractive but who has never given you any reason to believe the attraction is reciprocal and other strange and creepy things). What the researchers found (and this is interesting to consider in voir dire) is that when you put temporary power in the hands of those who have been chronically powerless, they will be more likely to exploit their temporary power (by doing sexually inappropriate things in this example—and we’d hypothesize they might also be more prone to more extreme responses to whichever party they most dislike). We’ve written a number of times on the differences in how powerful people are perceived versus how powerless people are perceived—but haven’t really tapped into sexual aggression and powerlessness before on this blog. (You’re welcome for that.)
In the article itself, the researchers say that those who see themselves as “chronically denied power appear to have a stronger desire to feel powerful”. They also note that there was no definitive demographic information (as we’ve always said!) to identify those with chronic feelings of powerlessness and they recommend future research to explore identification of a low subjective sense of power (and the hostility and aggression often accompanying it). Some researchers have said (according to the current researchers whose article is also cited at the end of this post) that there may be a difference “between construing power as an opportunity to do as one wishes, versus a responsibility to look out for others”. It’s an intriguing idea to consider during voir dire.
We should also note that three of the five experiments run by the researchers writing this article used exclusively male participants while the remaining two used both male and female participants—so these results may be more generalizable to men than women.
So there you have it. Who is reading fiction? Who is over-confident about their knowledge (when they clearly do not have a lot of it)? And who has likely been chronically powerless? Food for thought when conducting voir dire and otherwise preparing for trial.
Oatley, K. (2016). Fiction: Simulation of Social Worlds. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20 (8), 618-628 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2016.06.002
Bavishi, A., Slade, M., & Levy, B. (2016). A chapter a day: Association of book reading with longevity. Social Science & Medicine, 164, 44-48 DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.07.014
Williams, M., Gruenfeld, D., & Guillory, L. (2016). Sexual Aggression When Power Is New: Effects of Acute High Power on Chronically Low-Power Individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1037/pspi0000068
Related posts:
- Should political orientation matter in voir dire?
- Voir Dire Fundamentals: Look for trouble, not for friends
- Voir Dire Strategy: Who’s the authoritarian?
Curated by Texas Bar Today. Follow us on Twitter @texasbartoday.
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