GENDER EFFECTS ON INDIVIDUAL VERDICTS AND ON MOCK JURY VERDICTS IN A SIMULATED ACQUAINTANCE RAPE TRIAL

Since more women than men college students vote guilty in a simulated acquaintance rape trial [e.g. G. J. Fischer (1991) ''Cognitive predict ors of not-guilty verdicts in a Simulated Acquaintance Rape Trial,'' P sychological Reports, Vol. 68, pp. 1199-1206], guilty mock jury verdic ts were expected to increase as a function of the number of women on t he jury (i.e., 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12). However, guilty verdicts di d not increase significantly until either females were an overwhelming majority (i.e., 10 women to 2 men) or the jury was all female. Even i n the latter conditions, guilty verdicts were fewer than would be expe cted based on the 86% of women and 66% of men voting guilty on a surve y completed after reading about the trial, but before serving on a jur y. Although a very large majority of females were needed to increase g uilty verdicts, a majority appeared to lessen the likelihood of not gu ilty verdicts. For example, when a majority of jurors were female, 0/1 8 hung juries leaned toward a not guilty verdict vs. 11/34 juries lean ing toward a not guilty verdict when less than or equal to one half of the jurors were female. Most of the students were White (85%), with 4 % Asian, 3.2% Black. 3.2% Hispanic, and 4% ''Other.''