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Black Sheep Effects On Juror Verdicts, Maryah E. Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the Black Sheep Effect and how an individual’s deviation (becoming a black sheep) from the in-group impacts the groups perception of the black sheep. Participants acted as mock jurors and chose a verdict for the defendant based on a vignette followed by a photo of the defendant. Race, the commonality shared between the defendants and mock jurors, acted as an automatic group divider. Participants analyzed were of either the same or different race from the defendants in the vignettes. One hundred and thirty individuals participated in the study, of which 66 were …