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Generation X: Active, balanced and happy. Seriously?
Remember them? Cynical, jaded, depressive punks? Unwashed slackers? Well, it’s time for a mental reset. They grew up. In the most recent issue of The Jury Expert, we have an article updating all of us on Generation X today.
This is an update of an article we first wrote back in 2000 attempting to describe Generation X in more balanced terms that reflected the actual research literature rather than solely individual opinions and the largely opinion-based popular media. It’s fascinating to return to your past writing and update it for current sensibilities while still retaining the integrity of the original work. Not an easy task.
Nor has it been easy for Generation X. A smaller generation sandwiched between two large (and often over-shadowing) generations (the Boomers and the Millennials/Gen Y)–Generation X morphed and matured while we weren’t looking.
We focus, in this new article, on updating the variables we identified as important for jury selection, voir dire and the hearing of your case back in 2000. And, naturally, we added in a few new ones as well since things change over the course of a decade.
Gen Xers are now 30-45 years old and have mortgages, families and careers. And guess what they’ve done?! They are the most educated generation ever. They are employed at a higher proportion than any other generation. They are married with children and are credited with reducing the divorce rate to the lowest we’ve seen in decades. They have retained and concretely defined their youthful values of family, work/life balance and acting locally not globally so that their lives actually reflect their values. And they are happy.
Who would have thought it? Take a look at our article on Generation X to see the summary of the research and to identify strategies for jury selection and voir dire. If we’re lucky, it will also update your thinking on these formerly inscrutable members of the venire.
Keene, DL Handrich, RR. Generation X: Active, balanced and happy. Seriously? The Jury Expert, November, 2011.
We made the ABA Blawg 100 list for the second year! Please take a minute to vote for us HERE under the Trial Practice category.
Mock Jury Research: How do we make it more useful?
The literature on mock juries has been criticized for years for use of convenience samples (i.e., college students). An upcoming issue of the journal Behavioral Sciences and the Law is devoted to examining mock jury research and assessing where we have been and where we need to go.
The authors argue that since we are trying to find out how people make decisions within the confines of the courtroom, with elements of law, burdens of proof and standards of evidence—we need to use real adult jury eligible volunteers. We are not that interested in how college students in Psychology 101 courses think about fact patterns and determine responsibility. And that is the mainstay of the psycho-legal literature on jury decision-making.
The authors refer to Bornstein’s (1999) conclusion that there are simply not enough comparisons between samples of convenience (i.e., college students) and actual community populations of jurors to test the generalizability of college student ‘jurors’. The entire issue contains multiple examinations of mock jury research—done with both college students and community members. Ultimately, they recommend beginning research with convenience samples and then doing comparisons with actual jurors. If you are interested in mock jury research, the entire issue is an interesting read.
It’s an interesting issue for us. If you are a regular reader of this blog then you know we make hypotheses based on social sciences research. And it’s interesting when we try those ideas out in our mock trial research. Sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t. And when they do work out, we think of them as a sort of secret weapon.
There is though, a difference between our college student mock jurors and our employed jurors. Here’s some of what we’ve seen:
Cases that require life experiences to assess damages can leave college-student mock jurors pretty silent. They don’t ‘get’ the rationale for damages and depending on personality style—will either follow older jurors or stubbornly insist on low or no damages.
High-tech cases with high-tech college-student jurors often result in young jurors speaking up actively and being listened to and questioned for additional information by less technologically proficient jurors.
Wrongful death cases (or other cases where a damages component is ‘mental anguish’) typically result in lower awards from these younger jurors who do not yet have the life experience to empathize with the pain of the loss of a partner or child.
Patent cases or intellectual property cases are often less concerning to our younger college-student jurors. They often do not see intellectual property theft as “that big a deal” and often have a higher standard of proof for awarding damages.
There are other ways we see younger, college-student mock jurors as different than our older mock jurors. But much of it comes down to individual differences between those college-students. If they are technologically proficient, they are often useful in those cases. If they are verbally persuasive, they can be seen as a valuable group members. We don’t know the magic answers to make academic mock jury research more useful and generalizable—but we like the idea of running basic research that compares convenient college samples with actual jurors.
The issue of how much faith you can place in the outcome of mock jury research is extremely important and complex. We have discussed it before in various ways, and we will revisit in again in the future. But for now, let’s be realistic. Even college students know that they are different than their parents. And their parents know how much they’ve changed since their 20’s.
Wiener RL, Krauss DA, & Lieberman JD (2011). Mock Jury Research: Where Do We Go from Here? Behavioral sciences & the law PMID: 21706517
Revenge is best served cold
What does that saying mean? An internet search yields the information that emotional detachment and planning (“cold blooded”) are best for taking revenge. [We need to take a moment here to remind you to not use proverbs that no one under 70 understands in the courtroom.] And this isn’t about how to get revenge anyway. It’s about why we like to take revenge and when that revenge is most sweet. And the answer appears to be a variation on the old saw “Don’t get mad, get even!”
Researchers looked at whether simple restoration of justice (“an eye for an eye”) is enough for us or if we also want the offender to understand just what they did wrong. Or, as anyone who has house-trained a dog can attest, there is part of you that wants the dog not merely to stop peeing in the house—you want him to feel badly about having done it. Researchers concluded that simple equalization of suffering is not enough—we also want the offender to know just why they were punished (for their bad or mean-spirited behavior). Bad dog.
My kids understand this without research scientists’ assistance. When they seek revenge, they want equalization of justice and suffering but they also want their sibling to know what they did wrong and to be punished and they want that sibling to know just who is responsible for their suffering.
Mock jurors are a bit different. They almost always want restoration of justice. They want to right wrongs. They want the offender (whether that is an individual or a corporation) to know they did wrong. However, financially punishing the offender is another matter entirely. Our mock jurors often hedge on the issue of punitive damages.
“I doubt he did it on purpose.”
“That word ‘malicious’ is pretty strong. I don’t think it was malicious so it doesn’t really rise to ‘gross negligence’.”
“I think being found negligent is punishment enough. This will make them think twice before doing it again.”
To award punitive damages, jurors have to be convinced of negligence but they also have to be very angry about the negligent behavior. They need to see a pattern of almost insolent disregard on the part of the offender. And for some, they need to see evidence of actual intent to for harm to result, not merely a knowledge of the risks and proceeding with conscious indifference to the potential for harm. It helps if the offender was callous about the pain and suffering of the plaintiff.
The common denominator to jurors awarding punitive damages seems to be that they need to see wanton disregard for the integrity of a contract, or the knowing abuse of shareholder rights, or the violation of social values for the sake of making undeserved profits. Or they might conclude that the story is on of disregard for the individual safety of the apartment complex dweller, the hotel guest, the conference attendee, the consumer/end user, or the innocent bystander. They see an offensive violation of ethical or moral standards that motivated the transgression. Punitive damages are a high hurdle, and a lot of anger is required to clear it.
Jurors are simply not like my kids who would award punitive damages against their siblings at the drop of a hat in the heat of the moment. Jurors need more. They are loathe to pass judgment on intentions without hard data on which to base their conclusions.
Gollwitzer, M., Meder, M., & Schmitt, M. (2010). What gives victims satisfaction when they seek revenge? European Journal of Social Psychology
Who knew we’d be such grumpy (but NOT old!) men and women?
You probably intuited this already but age is simply not settling well on our largest generation. From the exuberance of youth (“don’t trust anyone over 30”) to the contemplation of approaching 65—Boomers feel anxious about their futures. They are afraid they will outlive Medicare. But that isn’t all that is vexing the Boomers. A recent report published by the Pew Organization shows that Boomers are, in general, more downbeat than other age groups about the future of the nation as well as the anticipated trajectory of their own lives.
Compare the generational numbers for agreement with the following perspective:
“I am dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country today”
Silent and Greatest Generations (65 and older): 76%
Boomers: 80%
Generation X (ages 30 to 45): 69%
Millennials (ages 18 to 29): 60%
We Boomers are simply glum. More glum—it should be pointed out—than our own parents.
We are the new ‘grumpy old men and women’. We have become ‘the man’ (sic). We are more likely to say we have been hurt financially by the current recession and more likely to say we are cutting back. We are less religious than our parents and more religious than our children. We still see ourselves as young with the average Boomer saying “old age begins at 72” but we have lost our optimism for the future.
One of our (Boomer) clients had a great line in a mock trial from this summer: “What has become of our country?” It resonated with the mock jurors. It would likely resonate with Boomers. And it is likely what our parents (the Silents and the Greatest Generation) thought when we were young adults.
So, what’s the point? The point is that we have to take a step back and see what is happening to our country as part of a natural process. Time passes. New generations emerge. Older generations step back. We Boomers do not like to step back. And while (we sure think) it isn’t yet time for us to step back completely—it is time for us to stop taking hammers to the hands of those attempting to climb the ladder behind us.
We’ve written about Millennials (aka Gen Y) extensively. (See our papers on generational characteristics and on effective management strategies for Millennial/Gen Y employees.) We do not pretend to understand them entirely. And there are certainly things to be concerned about in the country and in our financial futures. But spreading gloom and doom around us is not an effective way to live happily. Discouraging others from working hard and achieving simply because they are young is not a way to keep Medicare (or some form of health coverage) solvent. We were mentored as young people. And those mentors often shook their heads. It’s time for us to step up. Boomers as mentors. Not as grumpy old men and women.
D’Vera Cohn, & Paul Taylor (2010). Baby Boomers Approach 65 – Glumly. Pew Research Center
Solo Practice University: We are so there!
We are pleased to announce we are both joining the faculty of Solo Practice University (SPU). SPU, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is an innovative format for legal education and professional networking. A subscription service, ["Solo Practice University picks up where your legal education left off"] SPU offers more than 700 lectures (and growing) on a wide array of topics related to opening your own practice of law.
Our course is titled: Understanding and Working with Juries in the 21st Century. Under this course umbrella, we’ll be teaching on all aspects of psychology and persuasion: bias, self-presentation, case presentation, case themes, jury selection, voir dire, beliefs and values, generation of jurors, our thoughts on what we call “the transactional trial” and more. Doug will start our SPU courses with a series on witness preparation and how it works best (for you and for your witnesses). As we learn from SPU students about what they are most hungry for and how we can most effectively teach what we know—we’ll modify accordingly.
We are especially pleased to join SPU not only because of the caliber of other faculty already in place but also because we believe in life-long learning and in the internet as the future of continuing education for attorneys. We are always eager to learn more and look forward to both teaching and learning in the richness of the SPU environment.
The first session of Doug’s class on witness preparation will be available next week. We invite you to stop by our pages at SPU and to peruse our blog for additional information on our approach to litigation advocacy. Last year, we were honored by inclusion in the APA Journal’s Blawg 100. This year—more quality and substantive blogging and our debut with Solo Practice University! We’re excited about the challenges and look forward to seeing you there.
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