The aim of this paper is to outline and discuss persuasion techniques used within the courtroom. The courtroom has been one of psychologists’ most preferred places when researching the different aspects of criminal psychology. Three pieces of work will be examined and evaluated. The first piece of evidence is by Foley, L. A & Pigott, M. A who conducted an experiment in 2000 called “Belief in a just world and jury decisions in a civil rape trial”.
The main aim of the study was to see how much rape victims would be held responsible for the harm done to them and how much compensation they would receive for damages, taking into account that this is a just world. This was done by testing two hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: younger plaintiffs and older plaintiffs will be held equally responsible for rape. The independent variable was the age of the rape victim, the dependant variables were the percentage of responsibility attributed to the victim and the amount of compensation they received.
The participants were split into two groups: 47 psychology students (37 females and 10 males with a mean age of 20. 3 years) and 59 jury eligible residents of the same state (21 males, 38 females, with a mean age of 48. 5 years). The participants were given an account of the situation in which the rape occurred and were shown two different photographs of the victim showing her to be young and then old. The results showed that hypothesis 1 was accepted.
The second hypothesis was also accepted, the older woman was awarded significantly higher compensation than the younger woman. So, these just world hypotheses were a considerable amount of support and the reasons being for this support could have been either that the participants felt that the older woman would have been more psychologically damaged or sustained more physical injuries than the younger woman. However, some might disagree and say that the younger woman will live for much longer than the older woman and therefore would suffer the consequences more much longer.
Another reason could have been that the older woman was considered to be more innocent than the younger woman because young people tend to go out looking for sexual activity, which is more commonly as “on the pull”. Ethics have to be put into consideration because even though the study was conducted perfectly well the woman was a victim of a horrible crime and hopefully consent was taken from the woman. This study relates to persuasion techniques because it finds a way to make people believe in a just world. But some argue that it’s not the best way to judge something.
The second piece of evidence concerns the scientific case study by Bidrose & Goodman in 2000 called memory for child sexual abuse. The main aims were to examine the testimony given by a group of children in the course of a sexual abuse investigation, assess the level of support for the allegations made and the extent of abuse for the children who made no allegations. The participants were four girls aged 8, 13, 14 and 15. They testified about sex exploitation that involved eight adult men. The girls’ testimony was compared with several hundred photographs and audio taped records of the abuse
The results showed that for about 80% of the allegations there was supportive evidence, but more specifically: 85. 6% of alleged sexual acts (kissing, fellatio, intercourse). 42. 9% of coercive acts (paying or promising to pay for sex, paying for photo sessions). 82. 5% of alleged preparatory acts (girls posing for photos, the arranging of sex sessions with men). The percentage of the results was very high but would have been higher still if there wasn’t a problem with transcribing the tapes meaning that it was not always possible to identify what sexual acts were happening.