Right wing authoritarianism had a research heyday some decades ago and has enjoyed a sort of resurgence in the current work of researchers. Fortunately (or unfortunately) questions like these, from a 2005 update of the Right Wing Authoritarianism Scale, are rarely heard in voir dire (even in the most conservative venues):

Our country needs a powerful leader, in order to destroy the radical and immoral currents prevailing in society today. 

God’s laws about abortion, pornography and marriage must be strictly followed before it is too late, violations must be punished. 

It would be best if newspapers were censored so that people would not be able to get hold of destructive and disgusting material. 

If the society so wants, it is the duty of every true citizen to help eliminate the evil that poisons our country from within. 

But they appear routinely in research and we try to learn what we can. Sample 1 was collected in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium by “aggregating data from six subsamples” collected between 2000 and 2010. The researchers used data from 577 men and 644 women with an average age of 43.9 years. Sample 2 was collected in the Netherlands in 2010 by an online survey company. This sample included 426 men and 374 women with an average age of 49.5 years.

Participants completed the Right-Wing Authoritarian Scale, a cultural conservatism scale, and the 8-item Subtle and Blatant Prejudice Scale. (How blatant you ask? Here’s a sample question: “We have to keep our race pure and fight mixture with other races”.  Again, not a likely question for voir dire.)

There was a relationship between age and prejudice (both subtle and blatant)  with older age resulting in higher levels of prejudice as well as stronger endorsement of right-wing attitudes.

Interestingly enough, the strength of right-wing attitudes increase with age. The researchers think as we age, we may derogate outgroup members to affirm our own self-worth. It calls to mind the [in]famous quote falsely attributed to Winston Churchill: “If you are not a liberal at 25, you have no heart. If you are not Conservative by 35, you have no brain.”

While we can’t use these measures themselves (or items from them) in voir dire–the findings of this research important. There is a tendency for us to become less tolerant of others as we age. However, that may have little to nothing to do with the senior citizen potential juror in your venue. Instead, your task is to glean what you can from their responses and what you know about them as individuals.

Do they sit quietly, isolated from others or are they chatty with diverse others? Do they appear stern and angry and bitter? Do they proudly wear a Confederate Flag pin, a Daughters of the American Revolution scarf, or an ACLU tee shirt? You may think that sort of comparison is ridiculous. So, we think, is assuming your senior citizen can’t be fair in deliberating, can’t keep up in a high tech trial, and can’t relate to/understand complex case narratives. It isn’t about the statistical aggregate. It’s about the individual when it comes to voir dire. And you know what assuming does…

Franssen, V Dhont, K Van Hiel, A 2013 Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 23: 252-257.

Franssen, V., Dhont, K., & Hiel, A. (2013). Age-Related Differences in Ethnic Prejudice: Evidence of the Mediating Effect of Right-Wing Attitudes Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 23 (3), 252-257 DOI: 10.1002/casp.2109

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“Their message is likely to be rejected regardless of whether it is objectively ‘right’, well-considered, well-justified, or well-argued.”

Bummer. If you don’t fit in with your audience, you may as well not be a messenger at all, according to this research. The reality is that logic doesn’t change hearts and minds. What you may see as simple recitation of fact, can be heard by the listener as a potential threat to how they see themselves. Especially if you are someone they believe espouses values opposed to their own.

It’s called the intergroup sensitivity effect. The intergroup sensitivity effect describes how people “agree with criticisms much less when the criticism comes from outside the group than when the same comments are made by an insider”. Members of a group see a critical outsider as not having their best interests at heart while in-group critics are seen as being more constructive–at least according to past research. (Those who have been in-group critics may question this declaration.)

The researchers say the ‘message rejection’ is a 3-step process.

First, the listener assesses your motivations. Are you trying to be constructive or not? If no, they stop listening. If yes, they continue listening.

Second, they appraise your message. Are the criticisms well-justified? If not, they stop listening. If they are, they keep listening.

Third, they accept you and your message.

The authors quote other researchers saying that “criticisms are ‘hot’ forms of communication, marinated in themes of threat, suspicion, and self-esteem”. And with that evocative description–let’s take a look at their research.

Participants were 188 Australian university students (124 female, 64 male with an average age of 18.6 years). They were exposed to written messages (argument quality: strong vs. weak vs. no argument) and messenger information (some critics were ingroup members, [i.e., Australians] and others were not [i.e., from the US, England or Canada]) and participants were asked to evaluate both the messenger and the message. The “messages” used were criticisms of Australia. Each message began with the following lines:

“One thing I have noticed is that Australians tend to be intolerant of immigrants and racist toward Indigenous Australians…”

In the no argument condition, there was no additional text. In the argument (weak or strong) conditions, the authors do not provide the contents of the essays but they indicate the strong argument was supported by research citations and government statistics while the weak argument was supported by comments in the newspaper, personal opinions and hearsay.

The author findings are stark and simple: outgroup critics will not be as successful as ingroup critics.

Participants thought ingroup critics were more constructive, less negative and they liked the ingroup critics more than the outgroup critics. When criticisms were made by an ingroup member, participants were more likely to agree with the critic’s position than when the same message was communicated by the outsider.

The authors make only one recommendation for the outgroup critic: Clarify your motivations for the criticism and then justify your claims.

“If messengers are not able to demonstrate that their intentions for criticizing the group are sincere, no amount of persuasive evidence will be effective in helping the critic win acceptance.”

This has direct applicability to litigation advocacy. We talk a lot about finding ways to make your witnesses and parties “like” the jurors. In the language of these researchers, that means the witness/party moves from an outgroup member to an ingroup member–to someone who is “like me”. This research highlights why that is so critically important.

Strategies for bridging this gap can include various reasonable forms. The crucial facet is that you can’t make any assumptions about acceptance– you have to earn it.

If you or your client are different (economically, culturally, racially, educationally, gender, age, et cetera) work to establish a trial story that includes threads of connection. And do it without pandering.

Take a careful look at your jury and see who is most likely to let you into their individual in-group. Maybe a difficult time they went through will help them identify the problems your client is having. Maybe they have a close relative or friend who gives them insight into the problems.

Everyone has felt shut out and misunderstood. A foreigner in our own country. Sometimes that common experience will soften resistance to seeing the commonality between “us” and “them”.

If you remain an outgroup member, or ‘not one of us’, we don’t care what you have to say. And that is simply a risk you cannot take.

Esposo SR, Hornsey MJ, & Spoor JR (2013). Shooting the messenger: Outsiders critical of your group are rejected regardless of argument quality. The British Journal of Social Psychology. PMID: 23316747

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Researchers wanted to examine whether “PowerPoint slides may influence mock juror decision making in a civil case”. They predicted that “when either party used PowerPoint, liability judgments would be more favorable to that party”. They also examined what happened when only one side used PowerPoint. They conducted three separate studies, each with close to 200 participants.

We also need to mention the design of the PowerPoint slides used in this study. The researchers avoided “bells and whistles” and instead focused on displaying “graphs and charts to explain statistical evidence and modest animations to enhance visual contrasts”. They did not want the slides to entertain particularly–but to educate.

The study used actual case facts in which a railroad company was sued for racial discrimination by African-American employees. Participants watched one of four versions of trial videotapes. The videotapes contained only opening statements by Plaintiff and Defense attorneys. Each side was allowed 27 minutes, so the entire video was 54 minutes long. The researchers ultimately report that “lawyers’ use of PowerPoint can effect legal decision makers’ liability judgments”.

Study 1: 192 undergraduate students enrolled at two different universities were recruited (56.1% female, 59.9% White, 13.5% Asian-American, 10.9% African-American, 8.3% Hispanic-American, and 7.4% “other or missing”).

Study 2A: 180 participants enrolled in a US university as undergraduates were recruited (56.7% female, 28.9% White, 40% Asian-American, 5% African-American, and 26.1% Hispanic-American). The experimental design involved comparing 1) whether the Plaintiff used Powerpoint or not, and 2) whether the Plaintiff went first, or the Defendant. Before we go farther, we know as well as many of you that testing for an ‘order effect’ in court makes little sense legally since you start the trial with the Plaintiff opening, not a coin toss. But hey, order effects are real, so it’s good to test them.

Study 2B: 189 undergraduate university students were recruited (59.2% female, 28.6% White, 36% Asian-American, 6.9% African-American, 24.3% Hispanic-American and 4% “other or missing”). The experimental design was also a 2×2, with 1) Defense using PowerPoint or not, and 2) order of presentation– either Plaintiff first or Defense first.

When Plaintiffs used PowerPoint along with their spoken presentations, mock jurors held the Defendant company more responsible for racially discriminating against African-American employees. Conversely, when the Defense used PowerPoint slides, mock jurors saw the Defendant company as less responsible for the alleged racial discrimination. In other words, if you use PowerPoint, it strengthens whatever side of the case you represent.

On Study 1, although not in Study 2A or 2B (where PowerPoint use was manipulated by one party only), if only one party (either Plaintiff or Defense) uses PowerPoint, the effect was more extreme.

In Study 1, mock jurors recalled more information when the Defense attorney’s used PowerPoint. Defense use of PowerPoint resulted in mock juror’s more positive perceptions of the Defense attorney. In Study 2A and 2B, when an attorney used PowerPoint, participants recalled their evidence better and thought more highly of the attorney’s using PowerPoint.

Using PowerPoint also resulted in jurors endorsing the attorney’s case narrative and holding the Defendant more responsible (when the Plaintiff used PowerPoint) or less responsible (when the Defense used PowerPoint).

The researchers say that using PowerPoint helps jurors understand trial information better. At the very least, it affirms that it’s reasonable to call PowerPoint (and Keynote, and others) “Presentation Software”. It helps you construct a more effective presentation. The research on learning styles and recall of presented material makes this a pretty easy call. If you learn via multi-sensory approaches (seeing as well as hearing), your learning is going to be greater. There are ways of screwing it up (mostly by overwhelming jurors with graphic complexity and sensory overload) that can actually diminish recall and persuasion. So, use presentation software. Correctly.

This is a powerful initial foray into the role of PowerPoint in visual persuasion for the courtroom. While, as the authors say, we need more of this sort of controlled research, this information would say you likely need to use some visuals along with your verbal presentation. If you don’t, both you and your client (at least according to this study) will do less well than the opposition.

Park, J., & Feigenson, N. (2013). Effects of a Visual Technology on Mock Juror Decision Making. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 27 (2), 235-246 DOI: 10.1002/acp.2900

For more information about research on multi-sensory learning and how to ‘get it right’, We recommend the following books:

Mayer, Richard E. Multimedia Learning. 2001 Cambridge University Press, New York, NY

Atkinson, Cliff. Beyond Bullet Points. 2005 Microsoft Press, Redmond, WA

Chosen, Stephen M. Clear and to the Point. 2007 Oxford Univ. Press, New York, NY

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