Authoritarianism, Pretrial Publicity, and Awareness of Bias in Simulated Jurors

In a simulated jury experiment, 158 university students were asked to render certain decisions as jurors in a criminal case. Subjects were exposed to damaging (to the defendant) pretrial publicity or to neutral pretrial publicity. Subjects were asked if they could remain impartial and also completed the F-scale questionnaire. Results indicated that even when subjects claim they are unbiased by pretrial publicity, their decisions as simulated jurors reveal bias. Their F-scores, however, appeared unrelated to judicial decisions.