which would a lawyer use to appeal to the jury's emotions in a hook

How do lawyers look at jurors during a trial?

Lawyers will observe jurors’ faces for telling reactions while the judge reads the charges aloud. Some will “look over at the defense like they have daggers in their eyes,” Frederick says. “Or they may look over somewhat sympathetic.”

What makes a juror feel angry at a defendant?

For example, a juror who determines that a civil defendant is responsible for a harm may then feel angry at that defendant; her anger may influence how she processes evidence about the extent of the victim’s damages; a finding of greater damages may create more anger; and so on (Feigenson, 2010, at p.52).

How do jurors’ emotional states affect their decisions?

Those emotional states therefore have an effect, of which jurors are unlikely to be conscious, on how evidence is evaluated, and on how jurors reach crucial decisions on vital issues such as witness credibility, criminal culpability, and civil liability.

What is a hung jury and why is it important?

These people have the potential to rally the rest of the group behind a unanimous decision, which is great for the plaintiff or the prosecutor. But they also won’t be afraid to disagree with everyone else, resulting in a hung jury, which is great for the defense.

How do lawyers persuade the jury?

To persuade, lawyers must appeal to their audience. They must know whom they are trying to convince. In a jury trial, lawyers should establish juror profiles during jury selection to identify individuals likely to render a verdict in their client's favor.

Can jurors show emotion?

Crying jurors may show their emotions, but that does not mean they are biased. In the high-profile trial of Casey Anthony, jurors cried after acquitting the young mother of murdering her two-year-old daughter.

What does emotion mean in court?

In this model, emotions are individual, arbitrary, unanalyzable, and ultimately a threat to the proper functioning of the legal system. They are, in the words of one prominent legal scholar, “inconsistent with the very norms that govern and legitimate the judicial power” (Fiss 1990).

What is the relationship between a lawyer and the jury?

(See The Right to Trial by Jury.) Lawyers and judges select juries by a process known as "voir dire," which is Latin for "to speak the truth." In voir dire, the judge and attorneys for both sides ask potential jurors questions to determine if they are competent and suitable to serve in the case.

Can lawyers cry court?

No,you will not see such scenes anywhere in any court. It's because he has got only sympathy for the person he is fighting for. He received his payment, he is HAPPY. Originally Answered: How do lawyers keep themselves from crying while arguing a case?

Is the law emotional?

It is however always said that emotion should not be allowed to creep into the sphere of law. Law is not a place for emotions. It is reason and rationality which should stay there, not emotions. This theoretical model has persisted despite its implausibility whether it is possible.

Can lawyers have tattoos?

Firms whose dress codes are based on their clients' reasonable expectations – rather than any hidebound concepts of what their staff should look like – may offer their lawyers a lot of leeway in their appearances, including accepting body jewelry as long as it is tasteful and discreet, and even tattoos.

What are all the emotions you can feel?

The 27 emotions: admiration, adoration, aesthetic appreciation, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, relief, romance, sadness, satisfaction, sexual desire, surprise.

Does crying help in court?

Remember to look at the judge and, if appropriate, at your lawyer, in addition to the lawyer who is questioning you. Don't be afraid to cry, if your emotions have clearly reached the boiling point. At this time, the judge will probably call a recess, and you'll have a chance to pull yourself together.

Can a lawyer be a juror?

Since April 2004, the exemption for lawyers from serving on juries was lifted, and the guidance from the Law Society’s criminal law committee warned that only in exceptional cases will complete excusal be granted.

What is the difference between a lawyer and a jury?

As nouns the difference between lawyer and jury is that lawyer is a professional person qualified (as by a law degree and/or bar exam) and authorized to practice law, ie conduct lawsuits and/or give legal advice while jury is jury.

How do jurors emotional reactions influence their assessment of facts and evidence?

Jurors' emotional reactions also influence their assessment of the evidence. Jurors who are angered by evidence of wrongdoing & harm to others feel more sympathy for a plaintiff & less sympathy for a defendant.

What does File emotion mean?

What it means to file a motion: A motion, in its simplest form is a list of requests that you are asking the Court grant on your behalf. You, or your attorney on your behalf, will file a Notice of Motion which includes a list of requests for the court to rule upon.

How do I file an emotion?

OverviewYou write your motion.You file your motion with the court clerk.The court clerk inserts the date and time your motion will be heard by the judge.You “serve” (mail) your motion to the other side.The other side files a written opposition to your motion with the court.More items...

Do defendants cry in court?

Despite the belief that some defendants– particularly those big time suspects who stand accused of pilfering millions, for instance—cry to win sympathy and merely as an act, most defendants who weep in court are likely doing it because they are genuinely scared and even possibly remorseful.

How do you emotionally survive a lawsuit?

How to Deal With Stress During a LawsuitGet a Reliable Legal Counsel. Often, the frustration comes from having a legal counsel that is not experienced enough to get a positive outcome. ... Engage in Calming Activities. ... Lighten the Schedule. ... Avoid Stimulants. ... Get Enough Sleep. ... Remain Active.

How do defense attorneys appeal to jurors?

Defense evidence. Defense attorneys also appeal to jurors, perhaps by attempting to elicit sympathy and empathy in jurors in hopes of making the jurors more lenient toward their clients. Haegerich and Bottoms (2000), for example, found that mock jurors who heard a defense attorney urging empathy for the defendant during opening and closing statements were less likely than jurors who did not hear this empathy induction to find a defendant guilty. Thus, appeals to jurors' empathy appear to affect their verdicts. Defense attorneys might also elicit negative emotions in jurors. Perhaps the best example of defense attorneys presenting emotionally disturbing evidence we can offer is the defense presenting disturbing details of a defendants' history of child abuse as mitigating evidence in an attempt to steer jurors away from the death penalty. Such evidence is often aimed at stirring jurors' emotions and certainly has the potential to be as emotionally charged as gruesome crime scene photographs or victim impact statements presented by the prosecution. The research investigating this phenomenon reveals, however, that the effect of emotional mitigating evidence is not always what one might expect. For example, research finds that mitigating evidence that is emotionally-disturbing (e.g., a history of child abuse) sometimes causes mock jurors to be more punitive, which has been labeled as the "backfire effect" (e.g., Barnett, Brodsky, Price, 2007; Brodsky, Adams, Tupling, 2007). Stevenson, Bottoms, and Diamond (2010) coded mock jurors' comments about a defendant's history of abuse during deliberations and found that jurors were more likely to either ignore the defendant's history of child abuse or even to use this factor as an aggravator, than they were to use this evidence in the intended mitigating manner. They found jurors were more likely to discuss a defendant's history of child abuse to mean that his behavior was controllable and stable more than uncontrollable and unstable, respectively. This, of course, is not likely the reaction the attorney would have expected. The researchers speculated that that the emotional evidence probably made jurors' more angry, but toward the defendant, which made them more punitive – even though the evidence was originally intended to make them sympathetic and thus less punitive toward the defendant. This is an example of how trying to manipulate jurors' emotions might have unintended effects — effects that can be explained by social psychological and neuroscience research about emotion and decision-making. This research can explain the effects of appeals to jurors' emotions that attorneys might not predict based on their own intuition about how jurors' emotions operate.

What is the second type of emotionally disturbing prosecution evidence that might elicit negative emotion in jurors?

A second type of emotionally disturbing prosecution evidence that might elicit negative emotion in jurors is victim impact statements . In the sentencing phase of a capital trial prosecutors can have the victim's family members testify about the impact of the victim's death. Supporters of victim impact statements believe that these statements provide information about the extent of harm committed by a defendant (i.e., serve a probative value). In Booth v. Maryland (1987) and South Carolina v. Gathers (1989), the Supreme Court banned victim impact statements from death penalty trials, finding them informationally irrelevant and biasing of jurors against the defendant, thereby contributing to arbitrary death penalty sentences and violating the 8th amendment that forbids cruel and unusual punishment. But in Payne v. Tennessee (1991), the Supreme Court reversed itself, and in a recent case, the Court even allowed the admission of "video tributes" to the victim, including pictures of the victim from childhood set to soft music and narrated by the victim's mother (Kelly v. California, 2008) – surely an appeal to jurors' emotions. The majority in Payne opined that victim impact statements are relevant to the sentencing phase of a trial because they speak to the level of harm resulting from a crime and that any violation of the defendant's rights "were harmless beyond a reasonable doubt" ( Payne v. Tennessee, 1991). Thus, the court is assuming that the effect of victim impact statements is probative (i.e., providing information regarding harm) and not prejudicial (i.e., "harmless").

What are some examples of eliciting emotions in jurors?

One form of evidence that prosecutors might use to elicit strong emotion in jurors is gruesome photographs from a murder scene. Mock juror studies reveal that, even when all mock jurors hear the same exact evidence, jurors who see gruesome photographs of a murder victim are more likely to vote guilty (Bright & Goodman-Delahunty, 2004, 2006; Douglas et al., 1997) compared to mock jurors who do not see the photographs. For example, Bright and Goodman-Delahunty (2006) presented mock jurors with a lengthy trial transcript describing a case against a man on trial for murdering his wife. Half of the mock jurors heard either non-gruesome or gruesome verbal descriptions, and in addition the jurors viewed either no photographs, non-gruesome photographs, or gruesome photographs. The mock jurors then reported their verdicts and how angry and disgusted they felt before and after reading the case materials. The verbal descriptions had no effect on verdicts, but the visual stimuli did: Mock jurors who saw the gruesome photographs were more likely to vote guilty and rated the prosecution's evidence as more sufficient than did jurors who saw non-gruesome or no photographs. Furthermore, these effects were driven by the mock jurors' reported anger toward the defendant; that is, viewing the photographs caused the jurors to become angry toward the defendant, and in turn, this anger led them to vote guilty more often and to believe that the prosecution evidence was sufficient. This suggests an emotion-driven explanation as opposed to an argument that gruesome photographs were merely providing unique information. An emotion-driven explanation is also supported by studies demonstrating that jurors who view color photographs are more biased toward punitive sentencing than jurors who viewed the same photographs in black and white (Oliver & Griffitt, 1976; Whalen & Blanchard, 1982). To claim that the color photographs serve a probative (i.e., informational) function for the jurors, one would have to argue that the more punitive judgments resulted because the color photographs contained unique information not evident in the black and white versions. A more compelling explanation is that the color photographs elicited more emotion in the mock jurors, which lead to more punitive judgments.

What is emotional evidence in juror research?

The authors here restate and refer to other juror research that discusses "emotion" or "emotional evidence" as if the emotional experience of a person is a definable segment of one's decision making processes that can be rationally understood and excised by a trial judge or trial attorneys in the course of a trial. (Salerno & Bottoms, 2009; Feigenson & Park, 2006). In Feigenson & Park, the authors refer to "legal decision makers' abilities to correct for any affective influences they perceive to be undesirable".

How does emotion affect a court case?

They proposed that emotion can affect legal judgments indirectly through providing information, but also directly in ways that are independent from any information the emotion might provide. For example, jurors' negative emotions caused by emotional evidence would make them more likely to process evidence that is negative, thus focusing their attention more on the evidence that is consistent with their anger toward the defendant. So, if jurors are extremely angry after hearing a victim impact statement, they might be more likely to pay attention to negative information (e.g., an officer testifying that the crime was particularly heinous) than positive information (e.g., a defendant's mother testifying to the positive aspects of his character). This might explain why mock jurors who viewed gruesome photographs rated the prosecution's evidence as more sufficient than did jurors who did not view the photographs (Bright & Goodman-Delahunty, 2006). Because the two groups heard exactly the same case evidence, this suggests that the jurors who saw the photographs focused more on the negative anger-congruent evidence (e.g., traumatic details of the crime, negative information about the defendant, etc.) than did other jurors.

How does emotion affect jury verdicts?

Attorneys attempt to elicit emotions in jurors during opening and closing statements, or through the use of emotionally disturbing evidence. These attempts might, however, cause unintended changes to the way jurors process or interpret trial evidence. As psychologists, it is not our job to argue that emotion can (or should) ever be divorced from legal decision-making. Instead, we argue that it is important for attorneys to understand how emotion might change jurors' thinking processes in ways that attorneys might not expect. First, we explain how different types of emotional evidence influence jurors' verdicts, highlighting instances in which emotional evidence influences verdicts in the opposite direction that one would expect. Second, we explain how social psychological and neuroscience research about emotion in general can be applied to jury decision-making to inform attorneys about the less expected effects this evidence might have on how jurors process and interpret evidence in the trial. For a more extensive examination of these issues see Salerno and Bottoms (2009).

How does anger affect jurors?

Strong negative emotion can bias the information-processing and decision-making processes in many different ways. For example, negative emotion can cause jurors to look for information and interpret evidence to be consistent with blaming a target (Alicke, 2000). This means jurors who are angry at a defendant might be more likely to seek out information that backs up that emotion and to interpret other information to be consistent with their ang er. Emotion can also change our judgments in a more direct way. People consult their emotions to decide how they feel about something (Forgas, 1995; Schwartz & Clore, 2003). For example, when jurors are deciding whether they trust a defendant, they might ask themselves how they are feeling. If they are angry they might interpret that to mean that they do not trust the defendant – even if the anger came from something unrelated, such as being in a bad mood. So, for attorneys, this means that jurors might consult their anger (caused by seeing a photograph of a child victim) as information that they do not trust the defendant, independent from an assessment of evidence indicating guilt. Finally, emotion can lead to visceral reactions that are merely justified by deeper cognitive reasoning that happens afterward (Haidt, 2001). For example, seeing a gruesome photo might make us angry, which we later justify by coming up with reasons to believe the defendant did it. In a particularly relevant metaphor, Haidt (2001) likens people more to lawyers defending a case than to judges or scientists seeking truth. If true, this would suggest that emotion might bypass rational, deliberative processing entirely and directly result in more punitive judgments. This theory would predict that the reason victim impact statements make jurors react more punitively is because they induce immediate visceral response that jurors later justify with evidence that fits their emotional reaction, not because they gain unique information from the statement.

How to counter an appeal to emotion?

To counter the use of an appeal to emotion, you can point out the logical flaw that it contains, point out the attempted emotional manipulation, address the emotional argument with facts, respond with an emotional argument of your own, or simply choose to reiterate the facts and stick to your original line of reasoning.

What is an appeal to emotion?

The appeal to emotion is a logical fallacy that occurs when a misleading argument, and particularly one that is unsound or missing factual evidence, is used with the goal of manipulating people’s emotions. For example, someone using an appeal to emotion in a debate might encourage the audience to ignore facts ...

How to negate an opponent's manipulation?

This involves trying to negate your opponent’s manipulation by appealing to people’s emotions yourself, either by eliciting the same emotion as your opponent or by eliciting a different emotion. Stick to the original line of reasoning. Sometimes, depending on the context and the audience involved, ...

How to appeal to emotion in an argument?

There are several approaches that you can choose from if your opponent uses an appeal to emotion: Point out the logical flaw in their argument. This involves explaining why your opponent’s argument was fallacious, and pointing out their lack of evidence or their use of unsound reasoning.

Why is appeal to emotion effective?

The appeal to emotion can be highly effective as a rhetoric technique, due to the nature of human cognition. This is because, when people process information and make decisions, they often rely primarily on their intuitive, emotional response to things, rather than on a logical, fact-based reasoning process. Furthermore, in many cases, people might ...

What are the two types of emotions that people experience?

Appeals to emotion can involve any type of emotion that people experience, of which are two main types: Positive emotions, such as joy, hope, courage, kindness, compassion, empathy, trust, respect, gratitude, affection, ...

Why is it important to keep in mind that appeals to emotions are often used in conjunction with other fallacies?

In addition, it’s important to keep in mind that appeals to emotions are often used in conjunction with other fallacies, in order to achieve a synergistic rhetorical effect. For instance, consider the following example:

How does emotion affect a jury?

As distilled in a recent review (Feigenson, 2015), juror emotion appears to affect information processing; judgments of responsibility and blame; and severity of imposed punishment. These effects generally are observed both when the juror’s emotion is integral to the case—that is, prompted by case-relevant information, such as gruesome testimony about a victim’s injuries—or incidental to the case—that is, prompted by information extrinsic to the juror’s judgment task, such as anger at a fellow juror for rude behavior, anxiety over being pulled away from work and home obligations, or disgust with unsanitary courtroom conditions (Feigenson, 2010, p.52).

What is the effect of mock jurors?

Those emotional states therefore have an effect, of which jurors are unlikely to be conscious, on how evidence is evaluated, and on how jurors reach crucial decisions on vital issues such as witness credibility, criminal culpability, and civil liability.

What are the advantages of mock juror studies?

Mock juror studies have many advantages, not least among them their relative ease of construction and implementation . Jurors, like experimental subjects, are laypersons who are presented with a constrained universe of stimuli and asked to make discrete decisions. The parallels between the world inside the laboratory and the one outside it, though, are not as elegant as we might hope. Ease of experimentation might serve the needs of the research community far more than it does those of the legal community (Maroney,2012b). In the coming years, one hopes, controlled laboratory experimentation on juror emotion will be seen primarily as a source for robust hypotheses to be tested in complex field settings rather than an end unto itself.

What is emotional labor in a judge?

This emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983) is difficult, particularly as it operates in tandem with the labor they must expend responding to and attempting to control the emotional experience and expression of others in their ambit , such as witnesses, jurors, spectators, and lawyers (Maroney, 2011b). Further research is required to understand in detail how judges perform this emotional labor; the psychological literature on emotion regulation yields a number of promising hypotheses as to the regulatory strategies likely to be most and least adaptive in the judging domain (Maroney & Gross, 2014).

Do judges experience emotions?

With all the caveats attending a new area of inquiry, the extant research strongly suggests that judges, too, experience emotion in the course of their work and that such emotion influences their behavior and decision-making. We are just beginning to understand with greater precision how emotions affect judges, and to develop theories for distinguishing legitimate influences from illegitimate ones.

Is the legal system affected by emotion?

In this growing field there is ample room for all approaches, wherever they hit along the qualitative to quantitative spectrum, and for all disciplinary orientations, ranging from the sociological to the psychological and even neuroscientific. The people who populate the legal system inevitably are affected by the full panoply of human emotion. Efforts to ignore or suppress this reality are doomed to failure; efforts to understand and shape it can meaningfully advance justice.

Who is the author of The Nature of the Judicial Process?

Cardozo, B.N. (1921). The Nature of the Judicial Process.

How do lawyers win over jurors?

During the selection process, lawyers start to develop connections with jurors and further hon e their understanding of each individual. By the time the lawyer arrives at trial, she is well-prepared to present a strong case tailored to her specific jury.

When do jurors arrive at their verdict?

Research suggests most jurors arrive at their verdict during or immediately after opening statements. They spend the rest of the trial selectively looking for evidence that justifies that initial decision.

Why do lawyers have to make closing statements?

Because verdicts are reached behind locked doors -- outside of the attorney’s influence -- closing statements must be strong and memorable. Trial lawyers can’t finish with a dry summation of the facts. Emotions play a large role in decision making, so attorneys often appeal to jurors’ emotions in their closing statement.

What happens when a lawyer questions a witness?

Any inconsistences in behavior raise dangerous doubts and erode her credibility.

What to do when you're in front of a customer?

When you’re in front of a customer, you’re under scrutiny as well. The prospect’s impression of you is influenced by everything from the way you handle questions and objections to something as simple as your response to a technology challenge. Like a good trial lawyer, you need to give a good performance. Be on time, treat everyone you meet with courtesy and respect, and stay level if problems come up. Your professionalism won’t go unnoticed.

Examples of Appeals to Emotion

Types of Appeals to Emotion

How to Respond to An Appeal to Emotion

Summary and Conclusions