Explaining the evidence: Tests of the Story Model for juror decision making.
1992/02/01 by Nancy Pennington, Reid Hastie · 732 citations
Decision Sciences · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Computational and Text Analysis Methods #Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics #Psychology #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Social psychology
paper · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.62.2.189
published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 62(2), 189-206 (American Psychological Association)
openalex publication_date 1992/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Abstract
This research investigates the Story Model, Pennington and Hastie's (1986, 1988) explanationbased theory of decision making for juror decisions. In Experiment 1, varying the ease with which stories could be constructed affected verdict judgments and the impact of credibility evidence. Memory for evidence in all conditions was equivalent, implying that the story structure was a mediator of decisions and of the impact of credibility evidence. In Experiments 2 and 3, Ss evaluated the evidence in 3 ways. When Ss made a global judgment at the end of the case, their judgment processes followed the prescriptions of the Story Model, not of Bayesian or linear updating models. When Ss made item-by-item judgments after each evidence block, linear anchor and adjust models described their judgments. In conditions in which story construction strategies were more likely to be used, story completeness had greater effects on decisions.
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