Dr Hayley Cullen2, Prof. Richard Kemp1
1UNSW Sydney, , Australia, 2Macquarie Univeristy, Sydney, Australia
Biography:
I am a Lecturer in the School of Psychological Sciences at Macquarie University. My research focuses on the role of cognitive processes – such as attention, memory, and decision-making – in legal contexts. Specifically, I conduct cutting-edge research exploring the factors that affect eyewitness attention and memory, and juror memory and decision-making. I am passionate about using psychological research to develop evidence-based legal practices, with the goal to prevent wrongful convictions and improve victims' access to justice.
Abstract:
Jurors may introduce inaccurate beliefs about how sexual violence is perpetrated (i.e., rape myths) during deliberation in sexual assault trials. We conducted an experiment to explore how different forms of misinformation impact mock-juror memory and decision-making, and whether a judicial instruction can mitigate these effects. Participants (N = 632) read a trial transcript of a sexual assault case. In the judicial directions at the end of the trial, some participants read a warning about encountering misinformation during jury deliberation, while others did not. Participants completed a decision-making questionnaire, including verdict, guilt rating, complainant credibility ratings. Next, participants read a transcript of a deliberation between jurors, which either contained no misinformation, or contained four items of pro-prosecution (e.g., complainant tried to fight back) or pro-defence misinformation (e.g., complainant did not try to fight back). Participants completed the decision-making questionnaire again, along with a series of memory tasks. Finally, they completed a measure of rape myth acceptance. Misinformation exposure impacted memory and decision-making in line with the misinformation. In other words, if participants were exposed to pro-prosecution misinformation, they were more likely to report these details in their free recall, and were more likely to vote “guilty”, than participants not exposed to misinformation. The same was true for pro-defence misinformation (more likely to report it, more likely to vote “not guilty”). The judicial instruction was ineffective in curbing this bias. These findings highlight the significant role that factual errors can play in jury deliberations, reinforcing the need to develop effective safeguards.