"Pleading innocents: laboratory evidence of plea bargaining's innocence" by Vanessa A. Edkins and Lucian E. Dervan
 

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

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

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Psychology Commons

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