Expert Witnesses and Ethnicity on Juror Decision Making

Abstract

Aversive racism describes a modern form of racism where individuals’ overt egalitarian ideologies co-exist with internal implicit biases towards minorities. This paradox results in individuals behaving in an unbiased fashioned when normative behavior is obvious, but potentially in discriminatory manners when the situation is ambiguous, the guidelines for appropriate behavior are vague, or when the basis for social judgment is inconclusive. The current study applied the insights of aversive racism to mock jurors’ judgment in a legal case. 209 participants read a fictitious civil law suit, including testimony by an expert witness. We manipulated the complexity of the expert witness’s testimony (i.e., high or low) and the ethnicity of the expert witness (i.e., whether he was ethnically Muslim or not). We predicted that ethnicity would not be a factor in the low complexity conditions, but that aversive racism would manifest in the high complexity conditions as the increased technicality of the testimony made the correct judgment less obvious, resulting in the ethnicity of the expert witness being an influential factor in decision making. Contrary to expectations, the results of the study showed that ethnicity was not a factor affecting the decision of mock jurors. Reasons for the lack of aversive racism in juror’s decisions were discussed.Key words: Aversive Racism, Elaboration Likelihood Method, Juror Decision Making, Survey