Narina Nunez

Anxiety and depression among law students: current knowledge and future directions.

Increased psychology–law collaboration has yielded great strides over the past 20 years. However, one area of research that remains overlooked involves the psychological well-being of law students. The purpose of this article is to review and evaluate the existing literature on anxiety and depression among law students. This literature suggests that self-reports of anxiety and depression are significantly higher among law students than among either the general population or medical students. Recommendations for advancing knowledge in this area include developing hypothesis-driven research, using measures that adequately discriminate between anxiety and depression, and testing alternative hypotheses regarding the origins of law student distress.

The effect of jury deliberations on jurors' propensity to disregard inadmissible evidence.

The goal of this research was to examine the effect of jury deliberations on jurors propensity to disregard inadmissible evidence. Extant research is inconclusive; some research indicates that jurors do follow judicial instructions to ignore inadmissible evidence, but other research suggests that jurors do not. Two experiments examined whether jurors were affected by inadmissible evidence. The results revealed that although mock jurors were biased by inadmissible evidence prior to deliberations, the bias was tempered following deliberations. In Experiment 1, post deliberation jurors disregarded incriminating evidence that was ruled inadmissible because of due-process concerns. Experiment 2 replicated these results with less incriminating inadmissible evidence and also revealed that jurors did not accurately gauge the impact that the inadmissible evidence had on their verdicts. Theoretical and judicial policy implications are discussed.

Examining the efficacy of truth/lie discussions in predicting and increasing the veracity of children's reports

This study investigated whether childrens ability to reason about truths and lies influenced their truth-telling behavior. Four-six-year-old children (n=118) played a game that was intended to motivate children to use deception to hide a minor transgression. Next, an interviewer gave children one of four preliminary discussions. Children received a typical forensic truth/lie discussion (TLD), a developmentally appropriate and more elaborate TLD, or one of two discussions that controlled for the time spent conversing with children. Children were interviewed about the event. The results revealed that childrens performance on the truth/lie questions did not predict their truth-telling behavior. Regardless of their performance on truth/lie questions, children who received TLDs gave more honest reports than children who did not receive TLDs. These results suggest that discussing truths and lies with children may promote truth-telling behavior. However, the results cast doubt on the validity of using childrens performance on truth/lie questions as a measure of competency.

Jury decision making research: Are researchers focusing on the mouse and not the elephant in the room?

The concerns of jury research have extensively focused on subject selection, yet larger issues loom. We argue that observed differences between students and non-students in mock juror studies are inconsistent at best, and that researchers are ignoring the more important issue of jury deliberation. We contend that the lack of information on deliberating jurors and/or juries is a much greater threat to ecological validity and that some of our basic findings and conclusions in the literature today might be different if we had used juries, not non-deliberating jurors, as the unit of measure. Finally, we come full circle in our review and explore whether the debate about college and community samples might be more relevant to deliberating versus non-deliberating jurors.

Effects of defendant age and juror bias on judgment of culpability: What happens when a juvenile is tried as an adult?

The current study examined the possibility that trying juveniles as adults was prejudicial. One hundred and fifty three undergraduate mock jurors, classified as either prosecution-biased (PB) or defense-biased (DB), participated in the experiment. The jurors were randomly assigned to read a murder trial summary depicting a 19-year-old adult defendant (AD-19), a 16-year-old juvenile tried as an adult (JA-16), or a 13-year-old juvenile tried as an adult (JA-13). Defendant age interacted with juror bias. In the JA-16 condition, compared with defense-biased jurors, prosecution-biased jurors found the defendant guilty more often, had higher confidence in the defendant’s guilt, and set a lower standard of proof. By all appearances, some jurors might lose neutrality when judging juveniles tried as adults.

Maternal Attributions of Taiwanese and American Toddlers’ Misdeeds and Accomplishments

Parental beliefs are important influences on their child-rearing practices, which, in turn, affect their children’s personal-social development. Such parental beliefs are derived from the culture in which a parent and child reside. The differences might contribute to observed differences in children’s behaviors across nationalities. In the present study, parental beliefs (attributions) regarding the reasons for their children’s and their own positive and negative behaviors are examined. Five attributional orientations were assessed: (a) external/uncontrollable (situation), (b) external/unstable (luck-fate- chance), (c) internal/unstable (emotions), (d) internal/stable (traits), and (e) maternal socialization. Participants included 21 Taiwanese and 36 American mothers of children ranging from 24 to 36 months old. Results suggested that American mothers typically attributed positive behaviors to internal/stable dispositions and blamed external/unstable factors for negative behaviors, whereas Taiwanese mothers attributed positive behaviors to external/unstable factors and negative behaviors to internal/stable and/or external/ unstable characteristics. Implications are discussed.

Effects of Trial Venue and Pretrial Bias on the Evaluation of Juvenile Defendants

This research examines how the public evaluates juvenile defendants tried in different venues and whether participants with different pretrial dispositions evaluate these juvenile defendants differently. In Study 1, 144 undergraduate students judge juveniles tried as adults more harshly than adult defendants or juveniles who were tried in the juvenile court. Prosecution-biased participants judge all defendants more harshly than defense-biased participants. In Study 2, 123 community residents are recruited. Findings of Study 1 are largely replicated. In addition, defense-biased participants are more likely than prosecution-biased participants to endorse the wayward youth stereotype instead of the superpredator stereotype of juvenile defendants. Implications for juvenile justice and further research on the evaluation of juvenile defendants and pretrial bias are discussed.

The Impact of Angry Versus Sad Victim Impact Statements on Mock Jurors’ Sentencing Decisions in a Capital Trial

The present study tested the effects of angry and sad victim impact statements (VIS) on jury eligible participants’ decisions. Death qualified participants (N = 581) watched the penalty phase of a capital trial that varied the presence and emotional content of the VIS (angry, sad, or no VIS) along with the strength of mitigating evidence (weak or strong). Results revealed that Angry VIS led to an increase in death sentences, whereas Sad VIS did not. Furthermore, participants who reported becoming angry during the trial were more likely to render a death sentence, but participants who became sad during the trial were not. No interaction was found between VIS and strength of mitigating evidence, but participants exposed to the angry VIS did rate the mitigating evidence as less important to their decisions. The results indicate that VIS are not inherently biasing, nor are all emotions equally impactful on sentencing decisions.

The Impact of Emotions on Juror Judgments and Decision-Making

Emotions have not received a great deal of attention among psycholegal researchers, but interest in this area has grown during the past decade. In this chapter, the role of emotions in juror decision making is examined. In the first section of the chapter, the focus is on the basic theories surrounding emotions and judgments, as well as the degree to which the general theories of emotions and decision making are relevant to decisions made in the courtroom. Next, trial factors that may prompt specific emotional reactions from jurors are explored. In the third section of the chapter, psycholegal research that has examined the effect of jurors’ emotions on the decisions they make during trial is discussed. In the fourth section, potential moderators that might alter the relation between emotions and decisions are explored. Last, the limitations of the psycholegal research and the legal implications of the research are discussed.

Male and Female Parole Decisions: Is Paying Your Dues or Saying You're Sorry More Important?

Researchers have suggested that females and males consider different factors when making legal decisions; females consider offender remorse more whereas males consider more tangible punishments, such as serving time. The current study investigates gender differences when making legal decisions. The participants (n = 596) read one of three parole scenarios (armed robbery, arson, or drug trafficking) where inmate remorse and time served were manipulated, and decided whether to grant or deny parole. The results show that the participants were less likely to grant parole to the armed robbery inmate, followed by arson and drug trafficking. Additionally, time served affected decisions more consistently than remorse shown, regardless of participant gender. Contrary to hypotheses, women rated the inmates more positively when they had served the majority of their time. The current study suggests that time served is an important predictor of decisions, and that remorse may not be enough to make people agree to reduce punishment or grant freedom.