| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,200,000)
Fiscal Year 2006: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥1,400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,400,000)
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| Research Abstract |
By May 2009, Japan will introduce a lay judge system. Under this system, lay judges will make a judgement with professional judges. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of defendant's characters on judgement by lay judges. Especially, the author focused on the defendant's social status and examined its effect on judgement. In study 1, undergraduates (n=400) participated in the questionnaire-type experiment. They read either vignette about a deviant behavior and judged the term of imprisonment imposed on the actor. The results showed that the term of imprisonment imposed on a high-status actor was shorter than on a low-status one for an unintentional deviant behavior, but when the intention of deviance was clear, the advantage of the high status in the sanction was not observed. In study 2, undergraduates (n=462) judged the term of imprisonment for deviant actors with five different occupational statuses. The results of study 2 showed that the term of imprisonment imposed on a high-status actor was longer than on a low-status one. In study 3, ordinary adults (n=341) selected by random sampling, similar to the lay judge system, judged the term of imprisonment individually. The deviant's social status was manipulated by four different occupations. The results of study 3 showed that the actor's social status had no effect on the term of imprisonment, but the feeling of criticism was stronger against a high-status actor than against a low-status one. This suggests that judgement by ordinary people was not influenced by the defendant's occupational status, and even if they felt a defendant was blamable, their judgement was not influenced by their feeling. The inconsistent results of studies 1 to 3 reveal the necessity of further research.
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