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Social science research, current events & jury news all viewed through the lens of litigation advocacy with an emphasis on persuasion, bias, communication, and all phases of case preparation.

Rita Handrich
3 posts

Doug Keene
328 posts

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  • May 31, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 1,723 views

Your best bet for an expert witness is a friendly  nerd rather than an attractive scientist

by Doug Keene in The Jury Room

And it doesn’t really matter if the expert is male or female, if they are young or old, and they can be any ethnicity! In other words, said the researchers—the variables we have read so much about (i.e., gender, age, ethnicity) are not as notable as whether someone “looks like” our stereotype of a “good […]... Read more »

Gheorghiu, A., Callan, M., & Skylark, W. (2017) Facial appearance affects science communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)., 201620542. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1620542114  

  • May 29, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 1,514 views

Witness preparation: To vocal fry or not to vocal  fry?

by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room

If you are young(er) you likely know precisely what vocal fry means and if you are old(er)—probably not so much. It is a cultural phenomenon seen primarily (but not only) in young(er) women as described at the Mental Floss website: “Vocal fry describes a specific sound quality caused by the movement of the vocal folds. […]... Read more »

Anderson RC, Klofstad CA, Mayew WJ, & Venkatachalam M. (2014) Vocal fry may undermine the success of young women in the labor market. PLoS ONE, 9(5). PMID: 24870387  

  • May 26, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 1,523 views

Cassandra’s Regret: The Psychology of Not Wanting to  Know

by Doug Keene in The Jury Room

Do you want to know the future? You may want to say it all depends on which aspects of your future. Typically, while we seek information routinely to make decisions in our day-to-day lives, we don’t always want to know for sure what will happen in our futures. These researchers remind us about the story […]... Read more »

Gigerenzer G, & Garcia-Retamero R. (2017) Cassandra's regret: The psychology of not wanting to know. Psychological Review, 124(2), 179-196. PMID: 28221086  

  • May 24, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 585 views

The Invisibility Cloak Illusion: We are more observant (and  yet, less observed) than all others

by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room

This is the sort of article that can either amuse or terrify you. It will amuse you if you are charmed by all the ways in which we see ourselves as superior to others. And it will terrify you if you do not want to know that you are always being observed closely by everyone […]... Read more »

Boothby EJ, Clark MS, & Bargh JA. (2017) The invisibility cloak illusion: People (incorrectly) believe they observe others more than others observe them. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112(4), 589-606. PMID: 27977221  

  • May 17, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 485 views

Those who only kill children are neuro-psychologically different from other murderers

by Doug Keene in The Jury Room

Of course it isn’t a surprise that they are gravely disturbed, but who knew it was neuropsychological?? This is an article from researchers at Northwestern University and looks very specifically at similarities and differences in the neuropsychological test scores of those who killed only children and those who killed some adults as well as children. […]... Read more »

Azores-Gococo, N., Brook, M., Teralandur, S., & Hanlon, R. (2017) Killing A Child. Criminal Justice and Behavior., 2147483647. DOI: 10.1177/0093854817699437  

  • May 5, 2017
  • 08:05 AM
  • 406 views

Lies, lies and more lies: An update on deception research 

by Doug Keene in The Jury Room

All this week, we have focused on research about lying but there are multiple other articles we want to share with you that will not require a full post. Think of this post as an update on deception that will aid you in preparation for court (and life in general). Small, self-serving lies change our […]... Read more »

Garrett N, Lazzaro SC, Ariely D, & Sharot T. (2016) The brain adapts to dishonesty. Nature Neuroscience, 19(12), 1727-1732. PMID: 27775721  

  • May 3, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 567 views

Artful Paltering: One more way people lie (especially in  negotiations!)

by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room

Back in 2010, we posted on an article called Artful Dodging that talked about how politicians in particular, answer the question they prefer to answer rather than the question you asked. We talked about responding to that strategy in voir dire. Now, we have another article from the same group of researchers and this one […]... Read more »

Rogers T, Zeckhauser R, Gino F, Norton MI, & Schweitzer ME. (2017) Artful paltering: The risks and rewards of using truthful statements to mislead others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112(3), 456-473. PMID: 27936834  

  • May 1, 2017
  • 12:35 PM
  • 538 views

The illusion of truth (which is why you should never  repeat fake news)

by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room

It’s been all about “fake news” for a while now and here’s a study telling us to just stop talking about it. Well, sort of. What it actually says is even when we have knowledge to the contrary, if we hear something repeated enough—we come to believe it. Hence, our recommendation that we need to […]... Read more »

Fazio LK, Brashier NM, Payne BK, & Marsh EJ. (2015) Knowledge does not protect against illusory truth. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 144(5), 993-1002. PMID: 26301795  

  • April 7, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 390 views

Which science is most “certain” according to the American public? 

by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room

When litigation cases rely on science or highly technical information, it is critical to help jurors understand the information underlying the case at a level that makes sense to them. If they do not understand your “science”, they will simply guess which party to vote for or “follow the crowd”. Here’s an example of what […]... Read more »

Broomell, S., & Kane, P. (2017) Public perception and communication of scientific uncertainty. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(2), 286-304. DOI: 10.1037/xge0000260  

  • April 5, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 653 views

Your Black client is much more likely to be wrongfully convicted

by Doug Keene in The Jury Room

Those of us who’ve been around for a while have heard this repeatedly. But, lest you think times are changing, here’s some sobering data from a March, 2017 report co-edited by a Michigan State University College of Law Professor. From the beginning, this is a disturbing report. Here’s how it starts: African-Americans are only 13% […]... Read more »

Samuel R. Gross, Maurice Possley, & Klara Stephens. (2017) Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States. . UC Irvine: National Registry of Exonerations.?. info:/

  • April 3, 2017
  • 11:59 AM
  • 601 views

Criminal defense? Brain scans could show whether “they did it  on purpose”

by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room

When my kids were younger, I used to talk to them about the difference between intent and impact as they struggled to understand the varying reactions of people to their behavior. Back in 2009, we posted on some new research showing that we reacted more indignantly when bad deeds were done “on purpose”. Here is […]... Read more »

Vilares I, Wesley MJ, Ahn WY, Bonnie RJ, Hoffman M, Jones OD, Morse SJ, Yaffe G, Lohrenz T, & Montague PR. (2017) Predicting the knowledge-recklessness distinction in the human brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(12), 3222-3227. PMID: 28289225  

  • March 20, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 636 views

Simple Jury Persuasion: The SPOT (Spontaneous Preference  for Own Theories) effect 

by Doug Keene in The Jury Room

It’s been a while since we’ve had a new cognitive bias to share with you. Previously we’ve blogged on many different biases and here are a handful of those posts. Today’s research paper combines three biases—two of which we’ve blogged about before: the better-than-average effect, confirmation bias and also, the endowment effect. The endowment effect […]... Read more »

Gregg AP, Mahadevan N, & Sedikides C. (2017) The SPOT effect: People spontaneously prefer their own theories. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70(6), 996-1010. PMID: 26836058  

  • March 17, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 635 views

Don’t do this at work, beards, ear worms, narcissists, &  discarding advances in knowledge

by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room

Here’s another this-and-that post documenting things you need to know but that we don’t want to do a whole post about–so you get a plethora of factoids that will entertain your family and entrance your co-workers. Or at least be sort of fun to read and (probably) as awe-inspiring as the stack of vegetables and […]... Read more »

Beaman, CP, Powell, K, & Rapley, E. (2015) Want to block eagworms from conscious awareness? Buy gum! . The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,, 68(6), 1049-1057. info:/

Hepper EG, Hart CM, & Sedikides C. (2014) Moving Narcissus: Can Narcissists Be Empathic?. Personality , 40(9), 1079-1091. PMID: 24878930  

  • March 13, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 611 views

Identifying deception when the witness wears a face-covering veil

by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room

In 2014, we wrote about research investigating how people felt when a witness wore a veil such as some forms of a hijab or a niqab. Here were some of the findings we described in that research. We’ve written a number of times about bias against Muslims. But here’s a nice article with an easy […]... Read more »

Leach AM, Ammar N, England DN, Remigio LM, Kleinberg B, & Verschuere BJ. (2016) Less is more? Detecting lies in veiled witnesses. Law and Human Behavior, 40(4), 401-10. PMID: 27348716  

  • March 10, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 610 views

Facts [still] don’t matter: the 2017 edition 

by Doug Keene in The Jury Room

When we began this blog in 2009, the reality that facts don’t matter was one of the first posts we wrote. We wrote again about this reality back in 2011. And we’ve written about it several times since then so…here we go again! In this new era of fake news and fake news allegations, we’ve […]... Read more »

Swire, B., Berinsky, A., Lewandowsky, S., & Ecker, U. (2017) Processing political misinformation: comprehending the Trump phenomenon. Royal Society Open Science, 4(3), 160802. DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160802  

  • March 8, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 645 views

A secret weapon for voir dire: Smart people are more curious

by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room

Back in October of 2016, we wrote about a paper by the Cultural Cognition Project on assessing “scientific curiosity”. Here is some of what we said then about what Kahan and his colleagues found by measuring scientific curiosity: “What they found was that participants who scored higher on the curiosity scale were more likely to […]... Read more »

Trampush, J., Yang, M., Yu, J., Knowles, E., Davies, G., Liewald, D., Starr, J., Djurovic, S., Melle, I., Sundet, K.... (2017) GWAS meta-analysis reveals novel loci and genetic correlates for general cognitive function: a report from the COGENT consortium. Molecular Psychiatry, 22(3), 336-345. DOI: 10.1038/mp.2016.244  

  • March 3, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 599 views

Stereotypes, rudeness, sleepy (and punitive) judges,  assumptions and freak airplane accidents

by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room

Time for another combination post of various things you will want to know that will improve your conversation skills and general life knowledge. We are not saying that it will make your hair shiny or inspire your kids to do their homework. Kernels of wisdom, that’s what they are, in truth. Talking to your kids […]... Read more »

Sanchez DT, Chaney KE, Manuel SK, Wilton LS, & Remedios JD. (2017) Stigma by Prejudice Transfer: Racism threatens white women and sexism threatens men of color. Psychological Science. info:/

  • March 1, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 555 views

So maybe it doesn’t pay to be beautiful  

by Doug Keene in The Jury Room

Or at least, maybe there is no “ugliness penalty” if you are not beautiful. We’ve written a number of times here about the many benefits given to those who are seen as beautiful or attractive. This paper debunks the stereotype and says that salary goes beyond appearance and individual differences matter too. The researchers used […]... Read more »

Kanazawa, S., & Still, MC. (2017) Is there really a beauty premium or an ugliness penalty on earnings?. Journal of Business and Psychology. info:/

  • February 24, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 448 views

Juror questions during trial, alibis, police uniforms, and fMRIs and lie detection

by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room

Here’s another combination post offering multiple tidbits for you to stay up-to-date on new research and publications that have emerged on things you need to know. We tend to publish these when we’ve read a whole lot more than we can blog about and want to make sure you don’t miss the information. Juror questions […]... Read more »

Ciro Civile, & Sukhvinder S. Obhi. (2017) Students Wearing Police Uniforms Exhibit Biased Attention toward Individuals Wearing Hoodies. Frontiers in Psychology, . info:/

  • February 17, 2017
  • 08:02 AM
  • 602 views

Changing your name after marrying, bias at home and  work, and smart-phone blindness

by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room

It’s time again for another combination post featuring fascinating tidbits you may have missed were it not for our eagle eyes and constant efforts to keep you informed. And yes, we’ll start at the end since we know you are wondering if smart-phone blindness is really a thing. Would we steer you wrong? Smart-phone blindness […]... Read more »

Share, EF. (2017) Hillary Rodham versus Hillary Clinton: Consequences of surname choice in marriage. Gender Issues. info:/

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