With the increase of scientific evidence being used in court cases, it is important that jurors are able to understand that evidence. This also brings up the concern of stereotype threat and how that may impact jurors’ understanding and verdict. Stereotype threat is where, after a person is reminded of a stereotype of a group to which they belong, they will tend to conform to that stereotype more so than if they were not reminded of the stereotype. The results of this study found that when the scientific evidence included a higher gendered stereotype threat, women tended to have less understanding of the scientific evidence. Furthermore, the association between understanding of the science and the verdict decision was different when the scientific evidence included stereotype threat, but this was only shown for women and not men.
Meyer, K., Boohar, E., Westerman, L., Hertz, M., Urineza, T., Kelchen, H.,Eagan, S., & Gervais, S. (2020, April) Understanding Scientific Evidence in Court: The Moderating Role of Gender Stereotype Threat in Verdict Decisions. Poster for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Undergraduate Research Fair, Lincoln NE
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