Presenter: Benjamin Davies
Mentors: Robert Mauro and Robert Rocklin, Psychology
Poster: 17
Major: Psychology
Studying procedural justice has ramifications for legitimacy, and ultimately, legal system success. Jurists are concerned that any departure from the adversary system would call the legitimacy of the system into question. The use of court appointed experts is one such departure. We aim to examine the perceptions of procedural justice in court-appointed experts and the moderating effect of power on this relationship. Participants will be presented with 4 vignette scenarios describing a civil negligence trial in which the plaintiff always loses. The subjective power (Individual, Corporation or Government Agency) of the plaintiff, and whether the 3rd testifying expert is court appointed/adversarial will be varied and participants will report their perceptions of procedural justice in addition to individual difference measures. We have two predictions; (1) Across conditions, court-appointed experts will be perceived as less procedurally just than adversarial experts and (2) There will be an interaction between court- appointed expert and plaintiff status, such that if there is a high status plaintiff and a court appointed expert, perceptions of procedural justice will be lowest. While results have not been collected, we believe these findings will add a new dimension to current understanding of the justice of legal processes, and pave the way towards a more in depth study of court-appointed experts.