Validity Beliefs and General Ideology can Influence Legal Case Judgments Differently

Jurors sometimes enter a case both with prior beliefs about its likely validity and with more general ideologies that are relevant to the case. Although prior validity beliefs may serve as heuristics, directly biasing decisions when cognitive capacity is low, we hypothesized that ideology may bias systematic thought even when cognitive capacity is high. This experiment studied simulated individual juror decisions in a sex-discrimination case, measuring validity beliefs about such cases as well as feminist ideology, and exposing participants to 1 of 3 case versions under time pressure or no time pressure. Validity beliefs had a direct, heuristic impact on judgment only under time pressure. However, feminist ideology had a mediated influence on judgment via valenced thoughts about the evidence, even under no time pressure. Also, people with initially proplaintiff beliefs judged a woman's sex-discrimination suit more negatively than did prodefendants if the evidence was weak. The results suggest that when jurors can fully process information, validity expectancies might backfire if not supported by case evidence, but ideology can have a more pervasive influence on the decision-making process.