The Impact of an Attorney’s Speaking Fluency When Delivering an Opening Statement on Juror Decisions

Author

Truley A. Juneau, Texas Christian UniversityFollow
Paige E. Northern, Texas Christian UniversityFollow
Sarah "Uma" Tauber, Texas Christian UniversityFollow

Volume

27

Number

1

Department

Dept. of Psychology

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Date

2021

Abstract

A wealth of research has focused on factors that impact jurors’ decisions based on the information made available to them in court. However, in no prior research has the impact of how well an attorney delivers an opening statement been isolated to evaluate its direct impact on jurors’ decisions. To explore this issue, students were randomly assigned to read a fluent or disfluent version of an opening statement. The fluency of the attorney’s opening statement did not impact liability ratings or ratings of the likelihood of hiring the defendant. By contrast, the fluency of the attorney’s opening statement significantly influenced how likely participants reported that they would be to hire the attorney and for many of the traits referring to the attorney’s competency.

Keyword

Fluency, jurors’ decisions, perceptions of attorney, liability

Discipline

Psychology

Document Type

article

DCMI Type

Text

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Recommended Citation

Juneau, Truley A.; Northern, Paige E.; and Tauber, Sarah "Uma" (2021) "The Impact of an Attorney’s Speaking Fluency When Delivering an Opening Statement on Juror Decisions," Modern Psychological Studies: Vol. 27: No. 1, Article 5.
Available at: https://scholar.utc.edu/mps/vol27/iss1/5