Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate how the race salience effect influences juror decision making when manipulated through defense attorney statements. The literature is unclear regarding the ability of attorney statements to manipulate race salience and the individual influence of opening statements and closing arguments in creating the effect. In the current study, 207 undergraduate White mock jurors participated in a simulated criminal assault case in which defendant race was made salient through defense attorney statements (through opening statements, closing arguments, or both). Results indicated a race salience effect for verdict choice when race was salient and suggested that closing arguments may be particularly important in creating this effect. Our results also suggest that race salience creates an outgroup favoritism effect rather than the equalizing effect identified in early research. Implications of these findings for the race salience and juror decision making literature are discussed along with implications for actual court cases.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Notes
To further examine interaction effects on verdict preference, a generalized linear model with a specified binary probability distribution was also conducted. Results revealed an interaction effect (Wald χ2[7] = 15.03, p = .04) similar to those of the Pearson χ2 presented in the main text. White defendants were more likely to be found guilty compared to Black defendants in the Closing Only (p = .01) and Opening and Closing conditions (p = .04), the Opening Only condition was approaching significance (p = .09), and the Neither condition was not significant. We chose to present the results of the Pearson χ2 analysis for the sake of simplicity and to more easily ascertain effect sizes for each analysis.
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Gamblin, B.W., Kehn, A. Race salience and attorney statements: the unique role of defense opening statements and closing arguments. Curr Psychol 40, 2621–2633 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01147-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01147-8