preview

Sigall And Ostrove: Juror Experiments

Decent Essays
Open Document

Sigall and Ostrove (1975) concluded by juror experiment that ugly accused are sentenced severer than good-looking one regarding physical attractiveness unassociated crime and vice versa. Another juror study of Doob and Kirshenbaum (1973) supports that s.12 Canadian Evidence Act creates bias as participants rate higher guiltiness level on defendant with criminal record. Diamond (1997) indicates deficiency of deliberation, insufficiency of trial imitation and etc. in jury simulation and also disbelief of court on the simulation. Also, Mook (1983) argues that concern of external validity is unnecessary if researchers do not aim to use experiment result to generalize theoretical assumption to real life situations.
Findings of study of Sigall and Ostrove (1975) are supported by another study, but they do not take race of defendants into …show more content…

This is completely irrational. Harlow's baby monkeys study mentioned by Mook (1983) states that mother monkeys are composed of wire or terry-cloth. The settings are problematic because it is unrealistic to make wire or terry-cloth figure analogical to fake monkey mothers. The reason why baby monkey clings to the cloth mother might be because it is more comfortable or warmer but not mother love. As baby monkey cannot talk, its feeling is never known. Since the fake monkey mothers do not resemble to the real ones, it seems difficult to draw a sensible findings generalization on attachment of monkey with mother. Although the aim of the experiment is not to generalize the reality, it still needs a setting more similar to real life as required by external validity in order to draw a reasonable findings generalization. Thus, to form findings generalization, we cannot totally neglect the importance of external validity which requires high similarity of settings to the real life. (606

Get Access