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The psychology of telling murder stories: do we think in scripts, exemplars, or prototypes?
Author(s) -
Wiener Richard L.,
Richmond Tracey L.,
Seib Hope M.,
Rauch Shan M.,
Hackney Amy A.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
behavioral sciences and the law
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.649
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1099-0798
pISSN - 0735-3936
DOI - 10.1002/bsl.476
Subject(s) - narrative , jury , scripting language , psychology , poison control , human factors and ergonomics , social psychology , criminology , computer science , law , literature , medicine , art , environmental health , political science , operating system
According to the story model of Pennington and Hastie, jurors collect information at trial and modify it with general knowledge to create case stories. Schank and Ableson argue that human memory is organized to tell and understand stories. However, Finkel and Groscup questioned the use of manipulated, experimenter‐constructed narratives to demonstrate the existence of multiple prototypical crime stories. We interviewed 76 jury eligible, death qualified citizens and asked them to imagine a first‐degree murder scenario, describing the events that led to the killing. We coded the presence of dichotomous variables in the resulting stories and identified at least three shared story prototypes using cluster and profile analysis. We conclude that people do not store crime stories as simple prototypes and comment on the implications of this finding for legal decision‐making. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.