Kyle Rittenhouse listens as Judge Bruce Schroeder talks about how the jury will watch the video during deliberation during Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial at Kenosha County Courthouse Wednesday in Kenosha, Wisc.
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Kyle Rittenhouse listens as Judge Bruce Schroeder talks about how the jury will watch the video during deliberation during Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial at Kenosha County Courthouse Wednesday in Kenosha, Wisc.
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Ideally, the 12 men and women who served as jurors in Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial would reach a final verdict based solely on the evidence and testimony presented to them.
But humans don’t necessarily work that way.
According to psychologists who spoke with NPR, jurors walk into the courtroom with their own belief systems, experiences, and identities, all of which influence how they decide to rule — or even what they see in the video.
“Jurors are not clean people when they walk into the courtroom,” said Alexa Bankert, assistant professor of political science at the University of Georgia. She studies the development and consequences of partisan identity. “They are people with personal and political beliefs and values, including ideologies and parties.”
For example, the racial composition of the jury Proven to have an impact on the outcome of a case.
On Friday morning, Rittenhouse juries will meet for the fourth time to deliberate. They were tasked with deciding whether he acted in self-defence or if he acted recklessly last year when he killed two protesters and injured another in Kenosha, Wis.
Video proof isn’t everything it was cracked to be
As part of the Rittenhouse trial, jurors had to review several videos.
On the second day of deliberation, the jury asked to review portions of the 10-hour video shown during the two-week trial. They specifically requested and obtained permission to view videos taken by Gaige Grosskreutz, the man Rittenhouse shot and wounded.
As for the video evidence in the trial, it turns out what you see is complicated.
Mark Richards, Kyle Rittenhouse’s lead attorney, delivers his final arguments during Rittenhouse’s trial at Kenosha District Court in Kenosha, Wis., on November 15, 2021.
Sean Krajacic / Kenosha News via AP
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Mark Richards, Kyle Rittenhouse’s lead attorney, delivers his final arguments during Rittenhouse’s trial at Kenosha District Court in Kenosha, Wis., on November 15, 2021.
Sean Krajacic / Kenosha News via AP
Along with her research team, Emily Balcetis, an associate professor of psychology at New York University, studies bias in how people view video evidence.
She said that even when people see the same photo or video, they all come to their own conclusions.
Balcetis and her research team showed people video evidence depicting two men having intercourse. They used hidden, eye-tracking technology to record where the viewer looked.
“We found some people look more at one of the men than the other,” she said.
This is an important development. It was proof of how those viewers connected with one of the men in the fight with the other, she said. That connection changed the way those viewers saw the content on the video.
“Those who have sided with, or feel connected to, one of the defendants misinterpreted what he did in a way that accused him,” Balcetis said. “They thought he was more aggressive and mistakenly believed he used unwarranted force. And this happened the more they focused their attention on him.”
Viewers can fill in the gaps with their own stories
Reviewing the video evidence doesn’t necessarily mean the Rittenhouse trial jurors have a better understanding of what happened, Balcetis said.
“You might think that the more evidence you look at, the better you understand what happened. But Our research found That’s not true,” she said. Our eyes can only focus on and process the details of a very small part of what we are actually seeing. “
Activists calling for the conviction of Kyle Rittenhouse watch the trial by phone before Kenosha County Court as a jury weighs Rittenhouse’s verdict on Wednesday in Kenosha, Wisc.
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Activists calling for the conviction of Kyle Rittenhouse watch the trial by phone before Kenosha County Court as a jury weighs Rittenhouse’s verdict on Wednesday in Kenosha, Wisc.
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That means when someone is spying on one person in “a complex social context” – like a fight – they are missing out on what the other person is doing despite being visible, she said. So to fill the void, viewers construct a story to help understand what’s going on.
“Because we’ve actually seen the evidence with our own eyes, we’re confident that what we believe is true and true,” Balcetis said. “We were even more certain that what we thought happened was really what happened because we saw it with our own eyes. We didn’t realize we had only seen half the sentence. story.”
She continued, “Even when we look back, we didn’t always make up for what we missed the first time around.”
Balcetis notes: None of these studies are intended to hold anyone accountable for their actions.
“Rather, it’s intended to help explain why any two people can watch the same video evidence and form very different interpretations of what happened,” she said.
Political ideology is a major determinant of perception
Race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age can all be factors that influence how a person sees the world. Other aspects like immigration status, previous experience of discrimination, upbringing and even parenthood can also change the way people see things.
This is part of why consulting to advise an attorney on jury selection It’s a big industry, says Christopher Federico, a professor of political science and psychology at the University of Minnesota.
“We’re motivated to see the world in ways that reinforce regardless of our previous attitudes and beliefs,” Federico said.
A Kyle Rittenhouse supporter (left) argues with a pro-conviction activist (right) in front of Kenosha County Courthouse while a jury discusses Wednesday’s Rittenhouse trial in Kenosha, Wisc.
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A Kyle Rittenhouse supporter (left) argues with a pro-conviction activist (right) in front of Kenosha County Courthouse while a jury discusses Wednesday’s Rittenhouse trial in Kenosha, Wisc.
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Political ideology tends to make that a little bit worse, according to Bankert, of the University of Georgia.
If people watch the same videos of police abusing people of color, their political beliefs can strongly influence how the video is interpreted, she said.
“So in Rittenhouse’s case, a Democrat might see racially motivated murder while a Republican might see self-defense,” Bankert said.
“We find this kind of partisan reasoning especially among strong Democrats or Republicans,” she said, especially on very prominent cultural issues. in national debates such as racial justice but also reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ rights. “
People who pay less attention to politics, says Federico, tend to exhibit weaker political biases in how they evaluate evidence.
And some forms of evidence are harder to shape to our liking, he says. “If the evidence is pretty clear, it’s going to be hard for people to bend their views on it in the direction of homogeneity.”
Working around prejudice is possible
Federico said: “Just be reminded of the existence of bias and spend more time thinking critically.
Bankert suggests that people also take the time to gain a new perspective: “In the case of partisanship, recent work has shown that embedding people in groups that include opposition party followers has can help them engage in less biased arguments.”
The jury box was ceremonially empty in the courtroom as the jury continued their private deliberations during Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial at Kenosha County Court on Wednesday.
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The jury box is empty in the ceremonial courtroom as the jury continues its deliberations in private during Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial at Kenosha County Courthouse on Wednesday.
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And the jury is a form of that. Balcetis and her team asked study participants to keep a close eye on a person on video that they might not have paid much attention to. Only by doing this did they gain another understanding of what had happened.
“By deliberately looking at video evidence and trying to see what we wouldn’t naturally see,” she says, “people can gain a new perspective on what happened and even can change their view of who’s right and who’s in the wrong.”
