Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Current Research in Social Psychology
Abstract
We investigated plea bargaining by making students actually guilty or innocent of a cheating offense and varying the sentence that they would face if found ‘guilty’ by a review board. As hypothesized, guilty students were more likely than innocent students to accept a plea deal (i.e., admit guilt and lose credit; akin to accepting a sentence of probation) (Chi-square=8.63, p<.01) but we did not find an effect of sentence severity. Innocent students, though not as likely to plead as guilty students, showed an overall preference (56% across conditions) for accepting a plea deal. Implications and future directions are discussed.
Publication Date
12-10-2013
Recommended Citation
Edkins, V. A. and Dervan, L. E. , 2013. Pleading Innocents: Laboratory Evidence of Plea Bargaining's Innocence Problem. Current Research in Social Psychology 2:15-22 http://www.uiowa.edu/~grpproc
Comments
This published article is available in accordance with the publisher's policy. It may be subject to U.S. copyright law. http://www.uiowa.edu/~grpproc/crisp/crisp.html