Jurors are supposed to rely on the judge's instructions for verdict se
lection. However, recent research indicates that people have construct
ed naive representations of crimes that conflict with the judge's inst
ructions and that influence decision making. The present research expl
ored potential solutions to this conflict. Two experiments revealed th
at the problem cannot be circumvented by avoiding people's prior knowl
edge; subjects activated and used their prior knowledge of crimes even
when the crime name was withheld. Experiment 3 demonstrated that a su
pplementary instruction to disregard prior knowledge was also ineffect
ive. Experiment 4 revealed that a supplementary instruction designed t
o revise subjects' existing representations did improve decision accur
acy. These experiments indicate that the conflict between people's pri
or knowledge and the law cannot easily be avoided or disregarded, but
its impact can be reduced by revising people's existing concepts.