“Imagine all the people

Living life in peace…”

John Lennon’s words on how to get to a better tomorrow have just been verified by researchers. Simply imagining positive interactions with people who are different than us reduces our bias against them. Can it be that simple?

While past research has shown that contact with another racial group reduces bias and that “knowing someone who knows someone” from another racial group can reduce bias also, now we have even more promising research. Researchers had participants imagine positive interactions with an elderly person and with a Muslim person—just for two minutes. And what they found was that bias decreased and positive feelings increased.

In litigation, we know the importance of making our clients “more like” the juries (see our previous blog entry from February 26, “Be More Like Me!”). This research would tell us to find ways to have jurors ‘imagining’ a positive interaction with our client.

• A “day in the life video” that paints a two-minute positive introduction to our client and then shows the jurors what a day in the client’s life is really like.
• Testimony that illustrates the client’s likeability, trustworthiness, positive acts, et cetera.
• Perhaps in a closing statement that asks jurors to close their eyes and imagine how the world would have been different if the facts that they have come to know had not happened.  How would the world be different?  And how can the jurors make it different going forward from here?

Regardless of ‘how’ it’s done, the lesson from this research is that simply imagining a positive connection makes us less biased.  Not a bad idea!

Related posts:

1. Pretrial publicity & bias: Take a look at the age of your jurors!
2. Is racial bias fueling anti-Obama rhetoric?
3. ‘Getting it’, powerful bias & a terrific closing theme
4. Does ‘death qualification’ systematically bias our juries?
5. Simple Jury Persuasion: When to talk about racial bias and when to stay quiet