WHEN PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AND LAW COLLIDE - HELPING JURORS USE THE LAW

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.