The Case for Scientific Jury Experiments

Abstract

For decades, litigators have relied on focus groups. While this approach can help identify issues for further exploration, attorneys often use focus groups to shape trial strategy or even predict outcomes. But focus groups are ill-suited for these applications because they suffer from several well-known weaknesses.

Fortunately, recent technical advances in crowdsourcing and insights into human decision-making have opened the door to a better approach. We can now conduct large-scale (i.e., 100’s to 1000’s of mock jurors) A vs. B experiments. These experiments avoid the problems of focus groups and can be used to test any number of issues. We explain this approach and then highlight some examples from our research including: 1) the effects of anchoring, 2) the problem with self diagnosing bias, 3) how subsequent remedial measures affect juries; and 4) how juries respond to a variety of different jury instructions.

Keywords: Crowdsourcing, focus groups, trials

JEL Classification: O35