Explorations in Juror Emotion and Juror Judgment

The fictional sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, was acutely sensitive to the importance – even the primacy – of empirical evidence for developing workable theories. It is an insight which modern behavioral scientists might be well advised to recognize. Elsewhere (Kerr 1998), I reported some survey data that indicated that modern editors, reviewers and readers expect nearly any sound piece of behavioral science to begin with an explicit hypothesis, derived from a priori theory. I went on to suggest that this strong preference was based on both a healthy and unhealthy premise. The healthy premise is that cogent a priori theory can do much to justify, organize, and empower our observations – an axiom of the classic hypothetico-deductive model of science (e.g., Hempel 1966). The unhealthy premise is that this is always or invariably the case – that “…it is a capital mistake not to theorize, regardless of the knowledge, understanding, or even existence of the facts” (Kerr 1998, p. 201).1 This tempts us to attempt to make theoretical bricks, even when we lack empirical clay.