As polarizing as the world is today, it’s no surprise that gender and cultural worldview heavily influence jury decisions, especially those that rely on testimony from the defendant. Now, a new study from the University of Exeter (UK) has found a potential causal mechanism underlying these biases—major differences in the perceptions of the prevalence of crimes.
As part of the study, published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, 539 people aged between 37 and 61 were asked to estimate how common a set of legally relevant events were and to examine evidence in two hypothetical cases. One case involved an accusation of child sexual assault, and the other involved a defense to homicide based on domestic violence.
Specifically, study participants were asked to rate how often girls are sexually abused by people in positions of trust; how often girls make false allegations of sexual assault; how often women suffer psychological harm as a result of abuse by their partners; and how often women fabricate psychological harm as an excuse for bad judgement.
Participants were asked to make judgments about defendant evidence in both the child sexual assault case and the homicide case, including their decision if they were on the jury.
As expected, results showed participants of different genders and political beliefs evaluated evidence differently. In the child sexual assault case, for example, women were more likely to believe the victim and render a guilty verdict. What the research team found, though, is that the gender bias could be explained partly by the fact that women rated child sexual assault as being more prevalent than men did in the general population.
In fact, when the UK research ran a mediation analysis, they discovered that all differences in verdict by gender and hierarchy and individualism were mediated by underlying prevalence estimates. Hierarchy and individual are two sub-scales on the globally accepted Cultural Worldview Scale. The individualism scale measures the relative priority that participants assign to group and individual interests as opposed to communitarianism, while the hierarchy scale assesses participants' attitudes toward socially stratified roles.
“The relationship between gender and verdict in the child sexual assault case was mediated by ratings of the prevalence of child sexual assault, the relationship between hierarchy and verdict in the child sexual assault case was mediated by ratings of the prevalence of child sexual assault and false allegations, and the relationship between hierarchy and verdict in the homicide case was mediated by ratings of the prevalence of fabrication of psychological harm,” write study authors Rebecca Helm and Bethany Growns, both from the University of Exeter Law School.
The research team says the results of their study highlight the need for gender balance on juries. Currently, an imbalance is not uncommon on modern juries. For example, a 2017 study in Ireland showed that men dominated 57% of juries, with women dominating only 17%. In rape cases, the number rose to 61% for male-dominated juries.
“While the jury system specifically relies on jurors drawing on personal experience, this may be inappropriate where a juror's experience base is drastically different from that of the people they are making judgements about. Unreasonable and uninformed views about relevant prevalence should be viewed in the same way as problematic beliefs such as rape myths– as damaging misconceptions to be corrected,” concluded Helm.