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The role of emotions: gender differences in different displayed emotions and witness credibility

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The role of emotions: gender differences in different displayed emotions and witness credibility

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THE ROLE OF EMOTIONS: GENDER DIFFERENCES IN DIFFERENT DISPLAYED
EMOTIONS AND WITNESS CREDIBILITY

by

Pui Pui Cheung

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(PSYCHOLOGY)

August 2012

Copyright 2012 Pui Pui Cheung
ii

Acknowledgements
The preparation of this study was supported by University of Oslo and the film
school at University of Southern California. I thank Geir Overskeid for the resources
provided for this study, Savio Wai Ho Wong for help with data collection and data
analysis, and the participants for their time and effort. I especially thank Dr. Frank Manis
for monitor the progress and being my advisor during my college years. I thank Dr.
Antoine Bechara for being as principle investigator for the experiment and joining the
thesis defense committee. I also thank Dr. JoAnn Farver for joining the thesis defense
committee.
iii

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ii
List of Figures iv
Abstract v
Chapter One: Introduction 1
General Introduction: Decision Making 1
Emotional and/or Reasoning Process in Decision Making 3
Chapter Two: Literature Review 8
History of Eyewitness Testimony 8
Influence of Eyewitness Testimony and Eyewitness Credibility 12
Gender Difference in Eyewitness Testimony 15
Purpose of the Study 17
Hypothesis 17
Significance of the Study 17
Chapter Three: Methodology 19
Participants 19
Materials and Design 19
Procedure 20
Chapter Four: Results 21
Table 1: Means and Standard Deviation for the Group Differences by Gender 22
Chapter Five: Discussion 27
Conclusion 27
Future Direction 29
Bibliography 30

iv

List of Figures
Figure 1: Judgements of vicitms‟ credibility based on congruent emotions (condition
1) and incongruent emotions (condition2) acorss genders on a scale from 1
to 7 where 1 represented credible and 7 represented not credible.
23
Figure 2: Reaction time of judgements of vicitms‟ crediblity based on congruent
emotions (condition 1) and incongruent emotions (condition 2) across
genders. Significant main effect and intereaction were found.
24
Figure 3: Judgments of conviction based on congruent emotions (condition 1) and
incongruent emotions (condition 2) across genders on a scale from 0 precent
to 100 precent where 0 precent represented not guilty and 100 percent
represented guilty.
25
Figure 4: Reaction time of judgments of conviction based on congruent emotions
(condition 1) and incongruent emotions (condition 2) across genders. A
significant intereaction was found.
26

v

Abstract
In the past few decades, the role of emotions in eyewitness testimony still
remains controversial. The present study examined sex differences in the relation
between victims‟ displayed emotions and their credibility in eyewitness testimony as well
as in different emotional awareness across genders. Both female and male participants
watched 26 video clips in which women reported with incongruent, congruent or neutral
emotions that they have been raped. Then participants rated the victims‟ credibility and
made conviction judgments about the men who were accused. The results showed that
female and male participants did not show a significant difference in rating victims‟
credibility regardless of victims‟ congruent or incongruent emotional displays. However,
female and male participants significantly made different conviction judgments in both
congruent and incongruent conditions. When examining reaction time on both judgments
of credibility and conviction, male participants responded significantly slower than
female participants in incongruent conditions. Confusion perhaps is one of the main
factors that explain the slower responses from male participants. The results found in the
present study can be applied to further evidence-based studies in the same area as well as
fMRI studies, and also provide a suggestion for the composition of juries.
1

Chapter 1: Introduction
General Introduction: Decision-making
Decision-making is a wide and general topic and can be applied in many fields
like cognitive psychology, neuroscience, business, philosophy, and probability theory.
The diagram tree of decision-making usually involves costs, benefits, alternative choices
and final choice. Normally, when costs are larger than benefits, it suggests that people
would probably take the alternative choice. However, in real life situations, it is hard and
time consuming for us to write down every cost and benefit, and then compare them
before making a final decision. Therefore, many scholars also suggest that people often
make their decisions fast and unconsciously which is most likely based on past
experience or current psychological mood (Plessner, Betsch & Betsch, 2008; Singer,
2008).
First of all, taking a perspective from normative thinking, one must consider
decision-making logic and rationality. From a psychological perspective, decision-
making usually involves individuals‟ needs, values and preferences. Finally, from a
cognitive perspective, the process of decision-making is viewed as a continuous process
integrated in the interaction with the environment.
One must also notice that logical thinking in decision-making is very important.
For instance, in a formal manner, medical decision-making is based on diagnosis and
selecting a set of appropriate treatments, it shouldn‟t be made only by a doctor‟s intuition
even though he or she is an expert in the field. However, other researchers argue that
people tend to engage in intuitive decision-making rather than a rational approach when
encountering higher stress, higher time pressure, or situations with increased ambiguities.
2

But, whether decision-making is a rational (deliberate) or emotional (intuitive) process is
still under investigation (Galotti, 2002; Goldstein & Hogarth, 1997).
Ethics is also very important in decision-making. People‟s choices on making
ethical or unethical decisions are influential on themselves and often others, especially in
some particular settings like running a business. For instance, running a business involves
many transactions and relationships with multiple constituents, such as employees,
suppliers, money lenders, and shareholders. One decision can have a chain effect where
the outcome influences not only the decision maker(s) but all participants in the chain.
Usually, people see ethical decision-making as more of a rational process than an
emotional one. As Kohlberg (1973) pointed out, people reason through moral dilemmas
by applying moral principles in ethical decision making which is considered as a rational
approach. Moreover, Rest‟s (1986) model of ethical decision-making involves four steps:
first to identify the moral issue, then make a moral judgment about it, establish the moral
intent, and finally engage in moral action. This model suggests that every step towards a
final decision should include moral reasoning, and the model is still influential and
widely used by both individuals and organizations in their decision-making.
However, not all researchers confirm that ethical decision-making has to be a
rational process. Some say an intuitive decision process outside of conscious awareness is
somewhat „better‟. However, previous studies showed that emotional responses invoked
intuitive judgments of right and wrong, and therefore led to ethical failures (Bazerman,
Gino, Shu & Tsay, 2011; Thiel, Connelly & Griffith, 2011). Moreover, one study
demonstrated that people tend to engage in post hoc collective sense-making rather than
rational approaches to justify decisions (Sonenshein, 2007; Haidt & Bjorklund, 2008).
3

Besides rational and emotional approaches, recent scholars suggest that a dual-
processing model may better fit a human brain in making ethical decision (Marquardt,
2010). As Evans and Elqayam (2011) pointed out, the dual-process model is a “new
paradigm” of psychological reasoning, and it brings a new insight into the human
decision-making process. Moreover, results from a task of utilitarian reasoning (i.e.
approval of harmful actions that maximize good consequences) suggest that deficits in
emotional awareness contribute to increase utilitarian reasoning (Koven, 2011). In other
words the presence of both rationality and emotion are important in decision-making.
According to different approaches such as rational, emotional, or a dual-
processing model, a clear and firm conclusion about how these models interact and how
they work cooperatively or alone still cannot be drawn. Therefore, the rules of decision-
making are needed to be put on hold. What consideration people take in making their
decision, how the decision process affects their outcome, and under what circumstances
people tend to use the process of reasoning or emotion is still of great interest.
The Emotional and/or Reasoning Process in Decision-making
When making a choice what factors drive us to select those choices? Which
mental process comes first in our brain, whether it is reasoning or emotional, or do they
both happen simultaneously? Some scholars say reasoning should come first while others
argue that emotions take into account of intuition, and the intuitive process (i.e. a
recognition primed decision) provides us a sense of “gut” so that we can make decisions
faster and more accurately. Aside from that, recent findings suggest that perhaps we need
both processes to happen simultaneously, the so-called “dual processing model”, in order
to make a “more accurate” choice. The question of whether an emotional or reasoning
4

process comes first in decision-making, as well as the relation between these processes,
has been widely debated and investigated, but not surprisingly, the big question still
remains controversial.
As noted earlier, some say ethical decision-making relies heavily on rational
thinking whereas others disagree with it. In most of the economic theory, rational
thinking plays a critical role in our ability to make a decision. Rationality is expected to
be highly objective and logical, and a rational decision is considered as not just reasoned
but also optimal for achieving goals which underlies the theory of collectivism. As Byrne
and Johnson-Laird (2009) said, human beings are rational in principle but their
performance is limited due to varied factors in real life.
Human reasoning is associated with intelligence, logical thinking, cognition,
thinking about cause and effect, and what is good or bad. Theories of conditioned
interference with reasoning have been developing over the past few decades, for example,
the Selection Task by Peter Wason in 1966 (Wason, 1966). According to statistics, not
even 10% of the participants made correct responses in the task. The basic phenomenon
behinds this task is the belief of “if…then…”, if you want to obtain a benefit or goal X,
then you must fulfill condition Y.
Regarding the emotional process in decision-making, Antonio Damasio, the
author of “Descartes‟ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain” (1994), first
pointed out in his book that “…emotion was in the loop of reason, and that emotion could
assist the reasoning process rather than necessarily disturb it” (p.6). The most well known
phenomenon he brings up is called the “Somatic Marker Hypothesis” which suggests
behaviors can be guided by an emotional process. According to his definition, somatic
5

markers are the associations between reinforcing stimuli that induce associated
physiological affective states, and these associations can bias people‟s rational processing.
Somatic markers involve the physiological changes such as heart rate, skin conductance,
and endocrine release. According to his theory, when facing a complex and conflicting
choice, people‟s somatic markers created by the relevant stimuli are summed to produce a
net somatic state, and this overall state directs or biases their decisions and simplifies the
decision process due to their engagement in higher cortical rational processing (Damasio,
Tranel & Damasio, 1991). Over time, emotions and their corresponding physiological
changes become associated with specific situations and their past outcomes. As a result,
these situation-specific somatic states will keep developing and reinforcing over time and
help to guide human behaviors in favor of more advantageous choices. Moreover, the
specific emotional traits are considered to be adaptive throughout human evolution
(Adolphs, 2001; Downes, 2008; Tobby & Cosmides, 1990).
One of the major resources that support the “Somatic Markers Hypothesis” is
provided by experiments using the Iowa Gambling Task which was developed by
Antonio Damasio and Antoine Bechara in the 1990s. Since the Iowa Gambling Task
measures duration of time of participants to develop anticipatory emotional responses
towards advantageous choices, it is helpful to test the “Somatic Marker Hypothesis”
regarding how effective the neural signaling is from the perspective of rewards and
punishments. Researchers proposed that, despite reasoning, emotions matter more than
rational thinking in human interactions with environmental conditions and decision
processes (Bechara & Damasio, 2005). Although the Iowa Gambling Task is an
outstanding and salient measurement for exploring how emotions may have influence on
6

human decision processes, recent studies criticized that the test does not mimic real-life
situations, and other factors such as time and the health condition of the participant can
vary the task result (Cella, Dymond, Cooper, & Turnbull, 2007; DeDonno & Demaree,
2008).
Following the development in cognitive neuroscience, a two-way thinking
model is developed and known as the “dual processing model”. This model suggests that
the automatic, intuitive and implicit thinking system is parallel to the analytical and
conscious thinking system (Epstein, Pacini, Denes-Raj, & Heier, 1996; Stanovich, 1999),
and they are two separate systems that may or may not associate or cooperate with each
other. Gabbay and Le May (2008) found that experts usually rely on an automatic
thinking system whereas novices rely on an analytical thinking system. They described
novices are in need of developing knowledge and experience, but for experts who have
subtle strategies developed through experience, their decisions can be made by a past
experience or a background of abundant knowledge. One might describe an automatic
thinking system as emotionally driven and an analytical thinking system as logically and
rationally driven.
Even though these two parallel systems are valuable to decision makers,
researchers argue that the systems are affected by different biases and serve different
goals in decision-making, and therefore, these systems may not be applicable to all real-
life situations.
7

Chapter 2: Literature Review
History of Eyewitness Testimony
Eyewitness Testimony is a legal term in criminal law, and its research is
considered as a subfield in legal psychology. It refers to a description of an accident or a
crime that someone has seen, including an identification of perpetrator(s) and the details
of crime scene. The reports are usually used as evidence in criminal court trials. Some
researchers say human reports based on visual perception are generally reliable. However,
researchers from cognitive psychology or social psychology indicate that the reliability of
visual reports are usually overrated because of the occurrence of psychological factors
such as memory recall which can lead to reconstructive errors, anxiety and stress that is
associated with violent crimes.
Bartlett (1932) claimed that memories are not as accurate as people think; he
said that “remembering is not a completely independent function, entirely distinct from
perceiving, imagining, or even from constructive thinking”. He suggested that people
seem to fit past events into their existing representations of current events and to make
the memory more coherent for them. He further claimed that human beings are
predominantly determined by varying environments as well as social influences, and
memories keep developing and are constantly associated with their own construction to
meet the demands of daily life.
A schema, in psychology terms, refers to a mental structure in the human mind
and represents some aspects of the real world as well as a mental framework that helps
people to organize social information. A schema often contributes to human memory
construction. A finding from his study, Marsh (2007) suggested that retelling an event
8

could be linked to memory errors because of selective rehearsal as well as the schema
activated during retelling, and this effect can be observed in eyewitness testimony and
flashbulb memories. Another major figure in this field, Loftus (1996), pointed out that it
is possible to distort a person‟s memories by using leading questions. For example, if a
person was asked if he saw a red truck toy in the room, the question itself has no
implication. However, if a person was asked if he saw the red truck toy in the room, it
implies that one was in the room and the person is more likely to answer “yes”. It is
possible for people to ask leading questions to try to manipulate memory to reinforce the
cases.
Previous studies regarding eyewitness memory demonstrated that memory could
be distorted by leading questions (Loftus, 1996), repeated questioning (Odinot, Walters,
& Lavender, 2009), or different styles of questioning that witnesses encounter (Loftus &
Palmer, 1974; Loftus & Zanni, 1975). Researchers demonstrated that misleading
information has a significantly negative effect on eyewitness testimony (Loftus, Millers,
& Burns, 1978; Loftus & Hoffman, 1989; Wright & Loftus, 1998).
Many studies have been done regarding memory accuracy. In one memory study,
researchers found a significant main effect about testimony which was negatively
expressed, self-relevant, and emotional in content was best remembered by participants
(Block, Greenberg, & Goodman, 2009). Besides this, another study examined the impact
of emotional content of visual scenes on memory accuracy, which suggested that
negative images were more likely to induce false memories (Porter, Bellhouse,
McDougall, Brinke, & Wilson, 2010).
9

Furthermore, differences in accuracy of eyewitness testimony were found
between children and adults. In a study of Holliday and his colleagues, results showed
that children displayed larger effect of memory distortion when using leading questions
than adults (Holliday, Brainerd, Reyna, & Humphries, 2009). When they encountered
leading or closed questions, over 75% of the children tended to comply with the
questions and didn‟t request clarification about any complexity or confusion in the
questions. Also, children altered at least one initially correct response in the memory test,
the ratio of alternation was higher in children than adults (Zajac, Gross, & Hayne, 2003;
Zajac & Hayne, 2003). Taking this into account, many researchers agreed that more
special provisions are needed for children who give testimony in court trials. Moreover,
similar studies demonstrated that there was a negative effect of cross-examination on the
accuracy of both children and adult eyewitness testimony (Zajac & Hayne, 2003;
Valentine & Maras, 2011).
Anxiety and stress are important psychological factors that affect the reliability
and the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. A meta-analysis reviewed by Deffenbacher,
Bornstein, Penrod and McGorty (2004) indicated that high levels of stress had a negative
impact on both eyewitness identification of perpetrator(s) and eyewitness recall of details
associated with crimes. They suggested that when witnessing a violent crime, the
responses of eyewitnesses usually involve increasing anxiety and stress, and therefore,
these anxiety and stress responses bring errors to memory recall on eyewitness testimony.
Furthermore, they proposed that the relation between stress and performance is followed
by the Yerkes Dodson Curve, an inverted U-shaped curve, developed in 1908 by Robert
M. Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson. The Yerkes Dodson Curve illustrates that when
10

mental arousal level increases to an optimal level, the performance decreases. In this
circumstance, performance first increases and is associated with low levels of stress, and
when the levels of stress reach an optimal level, the performance drops.
On one side, Clifford and Scott (1978) investigated the accuracy of the nature of
the witnessed incident (violent vs. non-violent, narrative vs. interrogative, actions vs.
descriptions) and sex difference in eyewitness testimony. Their main finding suggested
that accuracy was poorer under violent conditions, and females performed poorer than
males in these conditions. Regarding individual differences, they found no relation
between either personality and accuracy or confidence in objective judgments and
correctness. Implication of this study indicated that witnessing real crimes, particularly
crimes involving violence, are probably more stressful than laboratory studies and
memory accuracy may be more affected in real-life situations.
On the other side, Yuille and Cutshall (1986) pointed out that memories should
be more accurate when a weapon is involved in a crime. Participants in their study
witnessed a shooting incident in which one person was killed and the other one was
seriously wounded. The result suggested that there was no negative effect in eyewitness
memory and only a little change was found in the accuracy of memory recall over 5
months. This study was criticized by other researchers because of the “natural
confounds” where the accuracy of eyewitness is drawn by the impact of arousal alone or
otherwise by the presence of weapons (e.g., Graham, 1997).
The reliability and the accuracy of eyewitness testimony has been bringing up a
long debate in history and the public picture is still confusing. Many potential factors
involved in eyewitness testimony such as eyewitness credibility, eyewitness identification,
11

misinformation effect, emotional content, emotional tone, and memory recall could cloud
the reliability and accuracy of it (Porter, Spencer, & Birt, 2003; Block et al., 2009; Porter
et al., 2010).
Influence of Eyewitness Testimony
Eyewitness testimony is used as evidence in court trials all over the world and
viewed as trustworthy and convincing. Jurors generally pay extra attention to it, and it
becomes a major part of evidence for jurors‟ decision-making. From the perspective of
witnesses, they sometimes do not or cannot tell the truth for certain reasons like
protecting the offender(s) or defender(s) by omitting some parts of the story while adding
additional details into other parts. Or other psychological factors, like anxiety and stress,
affect witnesses‟ performance on memory recall. From the perspective of jurors, with no
doubt, their decisions are crucial in court trials. However, the question of what jurors
should take into account when assessing the credibility of eyewitness testimony still
remains open and more work needs to be done in this domain.
As noted earlier the use of eyewitness testimony in the aspect of justice is very
influential. A study conducted by Loftus in 1979 showed that the wording of questions
can distort a person‟s memory and around 54% of cases swing from a non-guilty verdict
to guilty through an introduction of eyewitness (Hilgard & Loftus, 1979). Unfortunately,
recent trends show that although eyewitness tends to be reliable, it convicts innocent
individuals in an estimated proportion around 45% (Loftus & Ketcham, 1991).
Furthermore, Shermer and his colleagues concluded a relation between jurors‟
perceptions and eyewitness credibility; the more a person‟s reliance on the credibility of
eyewitness, the more likely a conviction is desired (Shermer, Rose, & Hoffman, 2011).
12

As a consequence, it is important to pay extra attention to the use of eyewitness testimony,
so researchers have been improving its reliability and credibility over the past few
decades.
As Graham (1997) pointed out, “[w]itness decision time in making an
identification looks moderately promising in the laboratory but may not survive the noisy
environment of a formal identification parade”. An article examined the use of an expert
psychologist in court trials to inform jurors about problems with eyewitness testimony,
and the result suggested that no clear evidence was shown in the help of experimental
psychologists. Therefore experimental psychologists should carefully consider whether to
offer such expert testimony in court trials (McCloskey & Egeth, 1983).
Indeed, perceptions of victims or eyewitnesses could be distorted by many
factors besides memory distortion, and they can significantly affect jurors‟ decision-
making in court trials. A cross-cultural experiment demonstrated that skin color, accent,
speech style, and spoken fluency could have a positive or negative impact on the
impression formation of witnesses. Moreover, Black non-verbal behaviors (e.g., indirect
answers) were assessed more negatively than White non-verbal behaviors by police-
citizen interactions (Vrij & Winkel, 1994).
Getting into the relation between emotional awareness and eyewitness
credibility, which is the main focus in this study, previous researchers have shown that a
person‟s credibility in a violent crime was determined by his or her emotional
expressions. For instance, Kaufmann, Drevland, Wessel, Overskeid, and Magnussen
(2003) have demonstrated that whether a person‟s statement was clear and consistent did
not seem to matter much but his or her emotional expression did. As they pointed out,
13

“[c]redibility judgments were strongly influenced by the emotions displayed, but not by
the content of the story”. If victims express negative emotions like crying, people tend to
have strong confidence on his or her credibility. However, people tend to be skeptical if
the victims displayed neutral or positive emotions, like a flat emotion or smiling,
respectively.
Moreover, in a study which examined the credibility of nervous witnesses,
researchers found that nervous witnesses were perceived as less credible than calm
witnesses. A significant correlation was found between nervousness and the confidence
and accuracy of observers‟ ratings (Bothwell & Jalil, 1992). Another study also
demonstrated that congruent emotions (e.g., sad) had a larger effect than no clear
emotions (e.g., neutral) in witnesses. When witnesses displayed no clear emotions their
credibility dropped and became less reliable than those who displayed congruent
emotions (Winkel & Koppelaar, 1991).
Switching from the perspective of victims to defendants, Heath and her
colleagues indicated that “the effects of emotion on perceived guilt level are mediated by
perceptions of the defendant” (Heath, Grannemann, & Peacock, 2004). Results from
experiment 1 in their study showed that when defendants displayed low levels of
emotions (i.e. absent), defendants tended to be less credible and therefore convicted.
Findings from experiment 2 suggested a relation between levels of emotions (low,
moderate, and high) and evidence strengths (weak vs. strong). If the evidence against
defendants was strong, their emotions did not matter much. Additionally, results from the
experiment 2 showed that when the displayed emotions of defendants were low, the
effect of the strengths of evidence shrunk.
14

By reviewing many of the previous studies, one must notice that it is very
important to provide more evidence to the public regarding whether emotional displays,
or the content itself (as part of evidence) is taken more into account in eyewitness
credibility.
Gender Difference in Eyewitness Testimony
Over the past few decades, scholars have been looking into different emotional
expressions of women and men, and the most common findings suggest that women are
more emotionally responsive, they experience and express emotions more intensively
than men. Moreover, the prevailing social role of women also suggests that they are
better at maintaining relationships because of their higher awareness of emotions than
men. Although the stereotype of women seems to be a common belief, the sex differences
in emotional expressions and awareness are still unresolved and remain controversial,
particularly in eyewitness testimony.
On one side, Barrett and his colleagues found that there was gender difference in
displaying emotional awareness. Their result suggested that “women consistently
displayed more complexity and differentiation in their articulations of emotional
expression than men” (Barrett, Lane, Sechrest, & Schwartz, 2000). An interesting finding
from the study of Vrij and Fisher (1996) found that victims were assessed more favorably
when they were angry rather than upset, and female observers generally assessed victims
more positively than male observers were. Moreover, several other studies showed that
females generally performed better than males in eyewitness testimony (Ellis, Shepherd,
& Bruce, 1973; Lipton, 1977).
15

On the other side, Block et al. (2009) claimed no significant gender effect in
memory for rape scenarios. But for one particular question about whether or not the
victims consented, the results suggested that the females‟ testimony was less accurate
than the males‟ were. The explanation of Block and his colleagues for this specific sex
difference was according to the self-reference effect. Under law reinforcement, if the
woman does not consent, the act of intercourse is considered as rape, and therefore, men
better remembered the pleas of “no” from the victim than woman did.
Aside from the displayed emotions of victims, significant effect on gender
composition of mock juries in a child sexual assault trial was found by Golding and his
colleagues in 2007. They found that varied gender composition of juries could affect
deliberations and conviction rates as the result demonstrated that jurors, composed
mainly by females changed from not guilty to guilty more often than did jurors in non-
female majority juries. In addition, female majority juries convicted more often (Golding,
Bradshaw, Dunlap, & Hodell, 2007).
A few explanations for gender differences in eyewitness testimony pointed out
that the differences may largely be due to specific items which favor females or males
(Powers, Andriks, & Loftus, 1979). The inconsistent findings from previous research
prevent an affirmative conclusion regarding sex difference in eyewitness testimony.
Therefore, more laboratory and real-life related research is needed, and we would like to
go one step further and predict whether gender difference in perceiving credibility of
victims displaying different emotions exists.
Purpose of the Study
16

In an attempt to shed light on the complex phenomena of whether rational or
emotional processing takes place in decision-making, particularly in eyewitness
testimony, researchers in this study designed an experiment where participants rated the
credibility of victims and made a judgment on how guilty the men who got accused were.
Ratings on the witnesses‟ credibility and judgments for conviction, both
associated with different displayed emotions are of particular interest as well as gender
differences under this laboratory design.
Hypotheses
1) Displayed emotions (incongruent vs. congruent) significantly influence the
perceived victims‟ credibility.
2) Women are more influenced than men by congruent vs. incongruent
emotions in the display of the testimony.
Significance of the Study
A growing body of literature on different perspectives of eyewitness reliability
and accuracy has been rising up in recent decades. The results of this study will shed
more light on the gender difference between displayed emotions and eyewitness
credibility as well as juror‟s verdict. An attempt to distinguish between an accurate or
inaccurate eyewitness based on emotional display of victims in court trials is crucial.
Implication for making a juror‟s decision regarding their judgments for victims‟
credibility would significantly be determined by the victims‟ displayed emotions, or not,
as well as a suggestion for gender composition of juries would be indicated.
17

Chapter 3: Methodology
Participants
All participants were recruited from the psychology subject pool of the
University of Southern California (USC). 31 females and 20 males aged from 18 to 25
participated. All of them were college students, native speakers and in good health.
Materials and Design
In this behavioral experiment, participants completed a computer task. Twenty-
six video clips were shown, filmed by USC film school students, and each video lasted
for about 20 seconds. The experiment lasted about an hour in total.
In each video, a woman reported that she had been raped by expressing
congruent (sad), neutral (flat), or incongruent (smiling) emotions. In 11 videos, the
actresses displayed congruent emotions; they displayed incongruent emotions in another
11 videos and neutral emotions in the remaining 4 videos. After seeing each video,
participants rated the credibility of each testimony on a seven point scale from 1 to 7
where 1 represented credible and 7 represented not credible. There were five equal
intervals between each two numbers; participants could click the credibility between any
two numbers. In addition, they picked a probability that the man accused was guilty. The
scale consisted of a horizontal line ranging from 0% to 100% with an interval of 10%
where 0 and 100 represented not guilty and guilty, respectively. These two scales came
after each video in a random order to prevent a priming effect.
A 2 to 3 second interval was set between each video, and a fixation cross was set
in the middle of the screen between trial. There was no time limit for responses but
participants were told to answer each question as quickly and accurately as possible.
18

A few practice trials including 5 random videos that were unrelated to the real
experiment were shown beforehand, as well as the targeted questions. The purpose of the
practice trial was to give participants a sense of what each trial looked like in the real
experiment, and answering the questions by using a mouse.
Procedure
At the beginning of the experiment, participants were informed that the purpose
of the study was to examine the victims‟ credibility and the judgment for conviction in
eyewitness testimony, and they were led to believe that they were about to watch
authentic reports with rape victims. Participants then signed a consent form and
completed the practice trials. Particularly, they were told to pay attention to the questions,
as they came in a random order.
The experiment was divided into two sections with a random order of videos in
each. After finishing the experiment participants were given an oral debriefing. First, they
were asked if they had any questions or comments about the experiment, or if they
noticed something „unnatural‟ to check whether they noticed that the videos were not real,
or if they recognized any person in the videos and therefore might respond „unnaturally‟
to the questions. At the end, they were debriefed about the true purpose of the study
including the reason they were mislead regarding the authenticity of video clips and were
told not to disclose any information.
19

Chapter 4: Results
A two-way ANOVA with repeated measures was used in the data analysis. For
each subject, we obtained the credibility judgments of victims and conviction judgments
for three types of emotions (congruent, incongruent, and neutral). However, due to the
unequal number of videos in each condition (11, 11, and 4, for congruent, incongruent,
and neutral, respectively), we only analyzed and compared congruent and incongruent
emotions regarding the main effects and interactions on credibility judgments of victims
and conviction judgments across gender. Moreover, we performed the same test to
examine the main effects and interactions on the reaction times across gender.
Credibility Judgments of Victims in Congruent and Incongruent Emotions across Gender
First of all, we analyzed the main effect of credibility judgments of victims
perceived in congruent and incongruent conditions across gender. Table 1 presents the
means and standard deviation for all the group differences by gender. Tests of within
subjects contrasts yielded an F ratio, F(1, 49) = .12, p>.05, and figure 1 indicates that no
significant main effect was found for gender. A main effect for congruence was found,
with congruent emotions rated as more credible on a scale of 1 to 7.

Table 1. Means and Standard Deviation for the Group Differences by Gender
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Females Males
Variables M SD M SD
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
1. Credibility Judgments in Congruent Condition (1-7) 3.89 1.37 4.02 1.20
2. Credibility Judgments in Incongruent Condition (1-7) 2.73 1.03 2.75 1.01
3. Conviction Judgments in Congruent Condition (0% to 100%) 53.16 22.10 48.48 21.62
4. Conviction Judgments in Incongruent Condition (0% to 100%) 71.01 14.73 63.57 18.25
5. Reaction Times on Credibility Judgments in Congruent Condition (second) 3.17 1.17 3.17 1.32
6. Reaction Times on Credibility Judgments in Incongruent Condition (second) 3.06 .78 3.44 1.44
7. Reaction Times on Conviction Judgments in Congruent Condition (second) 3.64 1.47 3.34 1.46
8. Reaction Times on Conviction Judgments in Incongruent Condition (second) 2.58 1.04 3.17 1.90
22
23

Figure 1. Judgments of vicitms‟ credibility based on congruent emotions (condition 1)
and incongruent emotions (condition2) acorss genders on a scale from 1 to 7 where 1
represented credible and 7 represented not credible.
Reaction Times on Credibility Judgments of Victims across Gender
Second, the main effect of reaction time and congruent and incongruent
emotions across genders was significant and an interaction was found as the graph shows
below (figure 2). Male participants responded more slowly than female participants in the
incongruent condition.
24

Figure 2. Reaction time of judgments of vicitms‟ crediblity based on congruent emotions
(condition 1) and incongruent emotions (condition 2) across genders. A significant main
effect of credibility and an interaction were found. Participants took longer to respond to
incongruent emotions, but this was primarily due to the male participants. Contrary to our
hypothesis, females were not more affected by emotional congruence in terms of
credibility rating or RT.
Conviction Judgments in Congruent and Incongruent Emotions across Gender
Thrid, we investigated the main effect on the second question about the guilt of
the men accused by the women in the videos and individual judgments were made in both
conditions. The ANOVA yielded a significant F ratio for gender, F(1, 49) = 1.48, p<.05.
Interestingly, as we can see from the graph below (figure 3), both males and females were
25

more likely to rate the men as guilty in the incongruent condition, and females gave
higher ratings of guilt than males. There was no interaction of gender and condition.

Figure 3. Judgments of conviction based on congruent emotions (condition 1) and
incongruent emotions (condition 2) across genders on a scale from 0 percent to 100
percent where 0 percent represented not guilty and 100 percent represented guilty.
Reaction Times on Conviction Judgments across Gender
A significant interaction between gender and conditions (congruent, incongruent)
was found for reaction time on conviction judgments. Figure 4 shows that female
participants were much quicker in the incongruent than the congruent condition, whereas
male participants showed a smaller difference between conditions.
26

Figure 4. Reaction time of judgments of conviction based on congruent emotions
(condition 1) and incongruent emotions (condition 2) across genders. A significant
interaction was found.
27

Chapter 5: Discussion
Conclusion
Influenced on Victim s’ Credibility by Congruent and Incongruent Emotions in Eyewitness
Testimony
The findings of this study are of general significance because they provide
evidence bearing on differences in emotional perception across genders. Regarding the
first hypothesis of whether different displayed emotions (congruent vs. incongruent)
significantly influenced the perceived victims‟ credibility, the results showed a
confirmation for it. Although no main effect was found for gender, there was a main
effect for congruence. In other words, victims who displayed congruent emotions were
more credible than who displayed incongruent emotions. Finding that congruent and
incongruent emotions influenced the judgments of victims‟ credibility and conviction
judgments, we further look into the specific gender differences in all conditions.
Gender Differences
Firstly, there was no significant gender difference in rating the victim‟s
credibility as mentioned earlier, both female and male participants responded similarly to
victims who displayed either congruent or incongruent emotions. However, there was a
surprising significant gender differences on conviction judgments. Females were more
likely than males to judge the accused men to be guilty in both the congruent and
incongruent conditions. It is possible that female participants have a slight bias toward
rating accused men as guilty.
Reaction times for credibility judgments and conviction judgments
28

Although this is not one of our hypotheses in the first place, we interestingly
found that female participants took less time than males to judge whether victims who
displayed incongruent emotions were credible or not. Moreover, female participants also
responded faster in the incongruent condition in making conviction judgments. One of the
explanations for these results is that male participants were confused by the victims‟
incongruent emotions in making both judgments of credibility and conviction. The
confusion might be caused by males‟ lower emotional awareness as they might have
expected the victims to display sadness or anger rather than smiling or laughing when
reporting a rape. In this case, the content itself rather than emotions might take
precedence in decision making for males. However, females who are expected to be
highly aware of different emotions noticed the „inconsistent‟ displays in incongruent
conditions and therefore could make the judgments in a faster way based on victims‟
incongruent emotions.
Implications of the study
An implication from the above results for decision making in genders could be
revealed as females tend to make judgments based on emotions whereas males rely more
on non-emotional reasoning processes, and it confirms the second hypothesis that females
are more influenced by the emotional displays in eyewitness testimony.
According to the results in the present study, it also provides a suggestion in the
gender composition of juries that perhaps more attention needs to be paid in composing
juries. It suggests that female-majority juries may tend to make decisions based on
victims‟ and/or offenders‟ emotions rather than the testimony content itself whereas
males are more likely to go through a reasoning process in decision making in eyewitness
29

testimony. Perhaps a male-majority or equally mixed gender composition of juries has to
be chosen carefully in courtrooms to prevent misjudgment or biases in making
convictions.
Last but not least, the results of this study can provide a beginning base of
evidence for fMRI studies investigating different activation of brain regions in human
decision making.
Future directions
It is important to determine whether this study is replicable and some refinement
could be made, such as correcting the direction of responding scales, engaging a larger
sample size and perhaps the videos may need to be re-filmed to lower the suspicion of
participants. Future research can continue to shed light on this topic and look into the
gender differences in perceiving witnesses‟ or victims‟ credibility and conviction
judgments in eyewitness testimony.
30

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Abstract (if available)

Abstract In the past few decades, the role of emotions in eyewitness testimony still remains controversial. The present study examined sex differences in the relation between victims’ displayed emotions and their credibility in eyewitness testimony as well as in different emotional awareness across genders. Both female and male participants watched 26 video clips in which women reported with incongruent, congruent or neutral emotions that they have been raped. Then participants rated the victims’ credibility and made conviction judgments about the men who were accused. The results showed that female and male participants did not show a significant difference in rating victims’ credibility regardless of victims’ congruent or incongruent emotional displays. However, female and male participants significantly made different conviction judgments in both congruent and incongruent conditions. When examining reaction time on both judgments of credibility and conviction, male participants responded significantly slower than female participants in incongruent conditions. Confusion perhaps is one of the main factors that explain the slower responses from male participants. The results found in the present study can be applied to further evidence-based studies in the same area as well as fMRI studies, and also provide a suggestion for the composition of juries.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Cheung, Pui Pui (author)

Core Title The role of emotions: gender differences in different displayed emotions and witness credibility

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Psychology

Publication Date 07/12/2012

Defense Date 07/11/2012

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Emotions,gender differences,OAI-PMH Harvest,witness credibility

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Manis, Franklin R. (committee chair), Bechara, Antoine (committee member), Farver, Jo Ann M. (committee member)

Creator Email arpui86@yahoo.com.tw,puipuich@usc.edu

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