Is this Injury Reasonable? Do Psychological Injury Expectations Affect Mock Jurors' Legal Decisions in a Sexual Harassment Case?

Abstract

The experiments examined the viability of a proposed decision-making process to explain how jurors' expectations for a sexual harassment complainant's psychological injury affect their legal decisions. Two experiments provided undergraduate mock jurors with a sexual harassment allegation that manipulated their range of expectations for reasonable psychological injuries (mild vs. mild to severe) and the severity of the complainant's alleged psychological injury (from minimal to extreme). Experiment 1 (N = 295) found that participants expecting mild injuries found the complainant's psychological injury allegations to be less reasonable and credible than participants expecting mild to severe injuries. Experiment 2 (N = 202) investigated whether these expectations influenced liability and compensatory damage decisions. As the injury increased from minimal to moderate severity, participants expecting mild injuries found less liability, whereas participants expecting mild to severe injuries found significantly more liability. Both expectations and injury severity independently impacted damage decisions, but not in an interactive fashion. We discuss the applicability of the proposed decision-making process to explain legal decisions in sexual harassment cases.

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