The Role of the Dissenting Voter on Jury Deliberation Online: A Pilot Study

Jury deliberation involves both individual judgments and interpersonal processes through which jurors exchange information, respond to disagreement, and work toward a collective decision. This mixed-methods pilot study examined individual characteristics, deliberative participation, verdict change, and dissent across seven virtual mock juries. Thirty-five participants took part in pre- and post-deliberation data collection and deliberated via Zoom in six-person juries that included a trained confederate operating under a conditional dissent protocol. Collaborative conflict-management style was positively associated with self-reported deliberative participation, whereas openness, agreeableness, competing conflict style, and civic engagement were not; however, the overall predictor model did not significantly improve fit relative to the unconditional model. Among 34 participants with complete verdict data, all six who initially selected not guilty changed to guilty following deliberation, producing a statistically significant paired shift that did not support the hypothesized direction of change. Confederate-introduced dissent occurred in six juries, while dissent emerged organically in one. Differences in deliberation length were therefore examined descriptively. Qualitative content analysis further indicated that exchanges involving dissent included substantive engagement with competing interpretations, evidentiary ambiguity, and jurors’ reasoning. These preliminary findings suggest that understanding jury decision-making requires attention not only to final verdicts, but also to how jurors participate in and respond to disagreement during deliberation.