Sexual harassment stories: testing a story-mediated model of juror decision-making in civil litigation.
The story model of juror decision-making proposes that jurors use personal experience and information presented at trial to create stories that guide their verdicts. This model has received strong empirical support in studies using criminal cases. The research presented here extends the story model to civil litigation and tests a story-mediated model against an unmediated model of jury decision-making. In Phase 1, content analysis of mock juror responses to 4 realistic sexual harassment cases revealed prototypic plaintiff and defense stories. In Phase 2, these prototypic stories were included as mediators in a model predicting verdicts in 4 additional sexual harassment cases. Mock juror attitudes, experiences, and demographics were assessed, then attorneys presented abbreviated versions of 4 actual sexual harassment cases. Path analyses provided support for the story-mediated model, which added significantly to the amount of variance accounted for in the outcome measures of verdict, commitment to verdict, and confidence times verdict. Implications for sexual harassment and other types of civil cases are discussed.
Huntley
Jill E
JE
Department of Psychology, Claremont McKenna College, 850 Columbia Avenue, Claremont, California 91711, USA.
Costanzo
Mark
M
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000739:Anecdotes as Topic; D002961:Civil Rights / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D032921:Consensus; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D033222:Judicial Role; D008016:Life Change Events; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D044469:Racial Groups; D012737:Sex Factors; D017406:Sexual Harassment / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States