Bette L. Bottoms, Ph.D. - US grants

As child abuse reports rise, so do the numbers of children entering the legal system. Using psychological theories and methods to understand children's abilities and identify optimal methods for interviewing children increases the chances that accurate information will be obtained from child witnesses. This, in turn, assures justice by aiding efforts to prosecute actual abusers and efforts to reveal the innocence of the unjustly accused. Research on children's eyewitness memory reveals that children are more resistant to misleading suggestions if they are interviewed in a socially supportive rather than an intimidating manner. However, the effect of social support across multiple interviews and after a significant delay is not known, and the psychological mechanism responsible for its effects is not understood. The proposed study is designed to (a) confirm positive effects of support on children's resistance to misleading questions about a stressful event, (b) determine the effects of social support across multiple interviews after a significant delay, (c) identify the mechanism underlying the effects of social support, and (d) explore the role of individual differences (e.g., social support reserves, self esteem) in moderating the effects of support. Children will experience a routine inoculation at a medical clinic, and a month later, they will be interviewed three times about the event in either a socially supportive or nonsupportive manner. It is predicted that social support will increase children's resistance to misleading questions by increasing their Perceived Resistance Efficacy, and that the increase in resistance will hold across the three interviews. Children low in social support reserves and self-esteem will be most affected by the social support manipulation. The proposed study will yield empirically sound answers to questions of critical theoretical and applied significance, and also provide preliminary data that will lay the groundwork for future studies in the PI's program of research.

This research tests a novel social psychological explanation which focuses on police-citizen interactions. Specifically, in police encounters, innocent Blacks might be concerned about being judged unfairly because of stereotypes depicting them as prone to crime. Such "stereotype threat" produces anxiety and arousal, leads individuals to manage their behavior, and increases demands on cognitive resources. Ironically, however, these correlates produce the same nonverbal behaviors that police use to distinguish liars from truth-tellers. Thus, threatened Blacks might be more likely than non-threatened Whites to behave in ways that police perceive as suspicious. The researchers will test whether stereotype threat and its correlates explain differences in the frequency with which Blacks and Whites engage in deceptive-looking behavior. Pre- and post-tests will assess whether a staged police encounter differentially affects Blacks' and Whites' feelings of stereotype threat, anxiety, physiological arousal, self-regulation, and cognitive load. Videotapes of the encounter will be coded to determine whether participants engaged in nonverbal behaviors commonly perceived as deceptive (e.g., gaze aversion, fidgeting).

The unwarranted disparate treatment of different racial groups can undermine the legitimacy of the police and prevent them from being effective. Findings from the current research will inform future research on curbing Blacks' experiences of stereotype threat in police encounters and preventing effects on nonverbal behavior from translating into racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

Although the jury room can be an emotional place, little research has examined the impact of jurors' emotions on the deliberation process. Three studies will investigate how expressing emotion affects the potential for a single juror arguing against the rest of the jury (i.e., a holdout) to influence the majority, particularly holdouts from groups associated with emotion stereotypes (e.g., the "angry Black man" stereotype). Stereotyped minorities are often penalized for expressing emotions. In a holdout juror situation, however, emotion stereotypes might present a unique opportunity for the holdout to violate majority members' expectations, which sometimes enhances the credibility of people who hold a minority opinion. This research will assess people's gender- and race-based emotion stereotypes (Study 1), and will investigate the implications of a holdout juror expressing these stereotypical emotions during jury deliberation (Studies 2 and 3). Participants will engage in what appears to be a computer-mediated discussion about a murder case with five other mock jurors, but in reality is a pre-written fictional deliberation script. These studies will test (a) whether participants are more or less persuaded by holdout jurors who express their opinions with sadness, anger, or no emotion, and (b) if these effects depend on whether the holdout is a man or a woman (for whom sadness is stereotypical and anger is nonstereotypical), or a White versus Black man (for whom anger is stereotypical and sadness is nonstereotypical).

The proposed research will increase understanding about the effect of emotion expression on underrepresented groups? credibility and potential to exert influence in emotionally charged settings (e.g., juries, collaborator meetings, hiring committees, workplace groups). It will also increase understanding of how historically underrepresented jurors can decrease or enhance their credibility through expressing emotion on juries, and ensure that the many efforts to promote diversity in jury selection are not futile.

Increased diversity in juries ensures representation of ethnic minority voices, but racial diversity presents unique challenges to group deliberations. People find it difficult to interact with people from other racial groups, because they are concerned with appearing prejudiced or with experiencing prejudice from others. People often perform worse on memory and decision tasks after they interact with people of a different ethnicity, because of regulatory depletion -- a decrease in people's ability to control their thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. The more people try to regulate some aspects of their behavior (e.g., expressions of prejudice), the less able they are to regulate other aspects (e.g., focus on the evidence). Yet studies show that, when White jurors deliberate with minority (versus only White) jurors to judge a minority defendant, they actually remember more case facts and are more accurate. This study will test the effects of interracial deliberations and defendant race (i.e., White or African-American) on jurors' cognitive performance and motivation to reach a fair verdict, guided by the hypothesis that jurors' motivation to avoid racial prejudice in verdicts encourages them to perform their duty as jurors well even when the social interactions are depleting. Such research, which increases understanding of the interpersonal and cognitive processes at the heart of jury deliberations, can inform courts, policy makers, and the public, and better explain jurors' verdict decisions and inform court practices. Results can be used to influence policy recommendations about how to maximize the benefits of diversity by reducing depletion in the jury room.

Specifically, the proposed experimental research relies on social psychological theories of self-regulation to test a model of group deliberation processes to investigate the effects of ethnic diversity on jury decisions. The strength model of self regulation states that people have limited abilities to regulate their behavior, thoughts, and emotions; therefore, regulatory efforts result in cognitive depletion and diminished performance. Using a self-regulation perspective, the proposed research promises to reconcile two sets of contradictory findings: (a) people are depleted after interacting with individuals from other racial groups (Richeson & Shelton, 2003; Richeson & Trawalter, 2005); (b) mixed-race juries are less racially biased and more thoughtful than all-White juries when they judge an African-American defendant (Bowers, Steiner, & Sandys, 2001; Sommers, 2006). What explains this discrepancy? The present project tests several hypotheses: (a) interracial deliberations are more depleting than racially homogeneous ones; (b) White jurors will be particularly depleted when they have to judge an African American defendant in the presence of African American jurors; but (c) White jurors' motivation to avoid being prejudiced against an African-American defendant (particularly when they deliberate with African-American jurors) would overcome their depletion and ensure they perform their jury task well. In a mock jury deliberation paradigm, juries will include 4 participants and either 2 White or 2 African American confederates, resulting in all-White or mixed juries. Jurors will view evidence from a trial in which the defendant will be presented as either White or African American. Jurors will be instructed about the law, then render individual verdicts, deliberate to reach consensus, and complete measures of regulatory depletion (i.e., Stroop test), memory, motivation to reach a fair verdict, implicit and explicit motivation to avoid prejudice, and impressions of other jurors. Videotaped deliberations will be coded to investigate jurors' focus on evidence and valuable contributions as a function of jury composition and defendant race.