Dr Faye Nitschke

There is concern that jurors¿ decisions in rape trials might be influenced by misleading cues (e.g., victim stereotypes) potentially explaining disproportionately low conviction rates. We investigated the bias hypothesis from the heuristic¿systematic model as an explanation for how jurors may be influenced by misleading stereotypes even while they are effortfully processing rape trial evidence. We expected that when case evidence was ambiguous, stereotypes would guide motivated participants¿ effortful information processing, but not when case evidence was strong. Mock jurors (N = 901) were asked to make decisions about a rape trial with either ambiguous or strong evidence in which the complainant was either stereotypically distressed or unemotional giving evidence. Participants were either placed under high motivation conditions to encourage effortful information processing or in a control condition with low motivation instructions to encourage less effortful processing as a comparison. Participants¿ information processing and case decisions were measured as key dependent variables. We found partial support for the hypothesized interaction and the bias hypothesis, suggesting that the types of evidence participants attended to in decision-making were influenced by misleading stereotypical cues. Our findings have implications for interventions to reduce the effect of misleading stereotypes on decisions in rape trials. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843221118018.

Jurors often negatively evaluate complainants making allegations of rape when those complainants were intoxicated at the time of the assault. It is, therefore, essential that legal practitioners have effective methods of ensuring that jurors use evidence of intoxication for the legally permissible purpose, which is to determine the complainant¿s cognitive capacity to consent. This study examines whether providing judicial instructions about how jurors should make use of complainant intoxication evidence assists jurors to use this evidence appropriately. University students (N = 212) read a case synopsis of an Australian criminal trial in which the complainant described experiencing mild or moderate levels of cognitive impairment due to alcohol consumption. Participants were then given a standard instruction about using the evidence of the complainant¿s intoxication or one that provided an upper decision limit for determining complainant cognitive capacity (providing inference support). As expected, presenting evidence about the complainant¿s alcohol-impaired cognitive state attenuated participants¿ negative perceptions of the complainant. The judicial instructions also assisted participants as they evaluated a moderately intoxicated complainant as less capable of consenting when participants received an instruction that supported the correct inference to draw from the evidence compared to a standard instruction. However, parallel mediation analysis showed that rape schemas mediated the relationship between perceived complainant capacity to consent and perceptions of defendant guilt. Judicial instructions that support perceivers¿ inferences may assist participants to more appropriately evaluate information about complainants¿ intoxication, however problematically, rape schemas still influenced decisions about defendant guilt.

Objective: It is difficult to explain why verbal street harassment, where typically a male harasser yells sexually harassing statements at a female victim, has survived as a behaviour. We propose that verbal street harassment may signal a harasser¿s dominance and aimed to test this in our registered report. Methods: Participants (N = 443) read one of two vignettes describing either a street harassment incident (in which a male perpetrator harasses a female victim) or a street incident without harassment. Participants were asked to evaluate whether the male target possessed a range of traits (including dominance) and to evaluate any harm the female target suffered from the incident. Results: Results suggested that the male target who verbally harassed a female victim on the street was perceived by participants as more dominant and as having a darker personality than a male target who did not engage in street harassment. Participants also perceived the female target as more harmed when she was harassed. However, results did not support the predicted interaction of participant sex and incident type on participants¿ perceptions of the male and female targets. Conclusions: These results suggest that verbal street harassment may signal a harasser¿s dominance which may be why the behaviour has been maintained. To establish whether verbal street meets the conditions to be classed as a costly signal, these findings should be replicated and extended. Understanding why street harassment persists as a behaviour is critical to designing effective intervention to prevent street harassment and protect harassment victims.

Victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) face significant barriers to having their complaints believed both when initially reporting their experiences and when giving evidence at trial. This is especially the case when they have been sexually assaulted by their partner. These barriers stem not only from misperceptions about what IPV is, but also due to a mismatch between the features of sexual assault in IPV and stereotypic expectations about what ¿real¿ rape is¿a violent surprise attack by a stranger in an outside location. We examine the research on schemas about sexual assault more generally and consider the way in which these schemas are structured, the functional purpose of such beliefs and the effect they have on perceptions of credibility and decisions about guilt. We review the published literature and discuss the results of some of the research currently in progress in our lab. In doing so, we propose an approach to counter-act the negative effect of these beliefs on whether victims are blamed and how their evidence is perceived, and the decisions made at various stages of the criminal justice system, such as those made by police and jurors.