It is known that courtroom decisions can be influenced by subtle psychological
biases, such as asking leading questions. Informed by metaphor research on the
connection between spatial proximity and intimacy (e.g., ‘we are
close’, ‘their views are far apart’), this
paper reports four experiments that look at the potential role of psychological
biases arising from the spatial layout of a courtroom. In particular, we ask the
question: Does being close or far to a defendant influence one’s reasoning about
who is likely to win or lose a court case? Working with an American (jury-based)
legal system as an example, our experiments manipulated the physical distance
between the jury box and the defendant’s table as shown on images of a
courtroom. Across several manipulations, we discovered that participants judged
the defendant to be more likely to win when the defendant’s table was located
close to the jury box. These studies are in line with the research on
‘metaphor-enriched social cognition’, showing that the way we talk about
relationships in terms of space corresponds to social reasoning in a spatial
world.
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2023. Effectiveness of the Administration of Justice in Nigeria Under the Development of Digital Technologies. Journal of Digital Technologies and Law 1:4 ► pp. 1105 ff.
Muir, Bethany R., Eryn J. Newman & Meredith Rossner
2023. The role of video background cues in the virtual court: a psychological perspective. Psychology, Crime & Law► pp. 1 ff.
Winter, Bodo, Sarah E. Duffy & Jeannette Littlemore
2020. Power, Gender, and Individual Differences in Spatial Metaphor: The Role of Perceptual Stereotypes and Language Statistics. Metaphor and Symbol 35:3 ► pp. 188 ff.
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