Exam 16: Social Psychology and the Law

Keep in mind experimental research on eyewitness accuracy conducted by Dunning and Stern (1994). Now, assume that you are a juror in a robbery trial. All things being equal, of which of the following eyewitnesses should you be most confident?

A mechanic at a truck rental office described a muscular man with a baseball cap and black T-shirt as the person who rented the truck that was eventually used in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. However, Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted of the bombing, did not resemble that description. The mechanic realized he had been confused and instead had described an innocent man who was at the truck rental office the day before McVeigh appeared there. This is a real-world example of faulty __________.

When jurors view a video of an interrogation, they are most likely to believe the suspect was coerced if they see __________.

How do jurors make sense of the large amount of information presented during the trial? What are the implications for how jurors process information for legal strategy?

The first stage of memory processing is encoding. Identify the sources of error associated with this stage of processing and give an example of how each relates to eyewitness accuracy.

__________ is a recollection of a traumatic past event that had previously been forgotten or repressed.

__________ refers to the process whereby people notice and pay attention to information in their environment, transforming sensory data into some sort of mental representation.

The presence of a dissenting juror is desirable because they encourage other jurors to __________.

Despite the fact that dissenting jurors often adopt the majority point of view, unanimous verdicts are desirable because this requirement encourages jurors to consider the evidence more carefully and __________.

When police officers perform lineups with witnesses, they should consider witnesses who are __________ and __________ to be more likely to be accurate.

Stephen is a defense attorney. He always arranges his witnesses so that he can explain his clients' actions to create sympathetic schemas in the jurors' minds. Stephen's success rate reflects the benefits of presenting evidence in __________.

What is the most likely source of the own-race bias?

According to your text, why should the police officer who conducts the lineup not know which person in the lineup is the suspect?

Which of the following procedures would lead to more accurate identification in a lineup?

Four men have been indicted for robbing $20,000 from a bank. After the trial, the jury will be most likely to convict __________.

Lawyers who present their case in story order present witnesses __________.

The Innocence Project lists more than __________ cases where people have been exonerated by DNA evidence after spending years in prison.

You are an assistant district attorney trying to decide which suspect to try for a burglary case. Each of four eyewitnesses picked a different suspect from a photo lineup. Based on research conducted by Dunning and Stern (1994), which eyewitness would you find most credible?

The authors of your text describe an incident in which a friend of theirs, Alan, found the body of an elderly neighbor. Despite obvious signs that she was murdered, Alan insisted that she died of old age because __________.

Lawyers who present their case in witness order present witnesses __________.