The Mnemonic Consequences of Jurors' Selective Retrieval During Deliberation

Abstract

The jury is a defining component of the American criminal justice system, and the courts largely assume that the collaborative nature of jury deliberations will enhance jurors' memory for important trial information. However, research suggests that this kind of collaboration, although sometimes improving memory, can also lead to incomplete and inaccurate "collective" memories. The present research examines whether jury deliberations, where individuals collaboratively recall and discuss trial evidence to render unanimous verdicts, might shape jurors' memories through the robust phenomena of Within-Individual and Socially Shared Retrieval-Induced Forgetting (WI-RIF and SS-RIF, respectively). The results revealed no WI-RIF or SS-RIF. However, we did find evidence in the direction of Within-Individual and Socially-shared Retrieval Induced Facilitation (WI-RIFA and SS-RIFA, respectively) in speakers' and listeners' narrative and open-ended recall of evidentiary details. The present results are discussed in terms of whether jurors' goals during deliberation and the deliberation structure (e.g., six or more discussants) protect against forgetting, or whether possible methodological issues (e.g., the vast amount of information presented) eliminated WI-RIF and SS-RIF and, in turn, make drawing conclusions surrounding the mnemonic impact of jury deliberation difficult. Regardless, the present results suggest jury deliberations are quite limited in terms of how much evidence is actually discussed compared to the total of what could be discussed, and our methodology provides an ecologically valid baseline for future research to better understand the mnemonic consequences associated with jury deliberations and, in turn, jury decision making.

Keywords: Collaborativeremembering; Collectivememory; Decision making; Forgetting; Jurydeliberation; RIF; RIFA; Selectiveretrieval.