Mental Shortcuts

INTRODUCTION
Jurors are a fundamental part of the legal system, and the role of this position is to listen to evidence presented during a trial, and decide on the guilt of the defendant (Queensland Courts, 2014). It is important this decision is based on factual evidence from the trial and not other information, prejudices or biases, or on widespread and oversimplified portrayals of particular groups, known as stereotypes. The use of mental shortcuts, or heuristics, within jurors can mean that a decision of guilt is based on social categorisation, such as gender or race, and the corresponding stereotypes rather than on facts (Hornsey, 2014).
Gordon and Bindrim et al.’s study (1988) focussed on examining the effect of defendant race and type
The participants read hypothetical scenarios, where the defendant, either male or female, was charged with either assault (male orientated crime) or shoplifting (female orientated crime), and decided on the likelihood of guilt. The rationale for undertaking the study was to determine if there was a gender bias against male defendants, resulting in a higher level of a guilty verdict, and whether crime type impacted the decision. Based on the studies conducted by Dean and Mack et al. (2000) and Gordon and Bindrim et al. (1988), it can be assumed that if gender stereotypes matter in likelihood of guilt, the current study will result in a more guilty defendant when described as male rather than female and charged with assault. It is expected this pattern would be reversed if the defendant was charged with
(1988) suggest that the association between crime type and race play a key role in the decision of guilt, while Dean and Mack et al. (2000) established that gender, and not racial, stereotypes applied in determination of guilt. In both studies, it was found that there was a higher chance of the defendant being found guilty in a crime typically associated with them, such as a woman being found guilty more often than men in a female-orientated crime (i.e. shoplifting), and the opposite for a male-orientated crime (i.e. assault). These conclusions were not supported by the results of the current study, as there was no difference between the genders in terms of guilt likelihood in various crime scenarios. An explanation for this result is the motivation and ability level of the participants. In this case, these factors are at a higher level, due to completing the study in the first tutorial and knowing it was used for assessment purposes, meaning that the central (logical) route to decision making was most likely