I'm a Thinking Blogger! It's a wonderful compliment from Emma Barrett's Deception Blog. The Thinking Blogger is a meme, in this case meaning an award that is passed from each winner to five others, and thus spreads around, revealing good stuff as it goes. It's an award that's had a great history lately; Emma got hers from Grits For Breakfast.
I'll need some time to narrow to five the list of blogs I wish I could tag. But that's good, because it's worth spending a few posts on the best part of Emma's post, and the most useful for jury watchers: the other blogs she honors.
Psychology: so much to read, so hard to find
If you're interested in juries, you need to know what's happening in psychology, and it's difficult to find strong and accessible sources. Tracking research and news that's specifically about juries is easy; you set up searches for terms like "juror" and "jury duty" and read it as it comes. But if you set up a search for "psychology," you'd have to troll several hundred stories a day, and still probably miss at least half of what you're looking for. Emma's field is psychology, and her own posts (at Deception Blog and its sister blog, Psychology and Crime News) and those of the bloggers she cites are by far the best way for an ordinary lawyer to stay current in that field.
Start with PsyBlog, one of Emma's other award winners. Indeed, you could use PsyBlog as your psychology home base, since one of its features is an extensive guide to other psychology blogs. PsyBlog is written by Jeremy Dean, a psychology graduate student whose prior experience in law, the Internet, and writing are all well used in this resource. His goal is to be trustworthy and accessible, and as he explains, that's not a common combination:
The media is filled with information about psychology, much of it partly or completely misleading. Even the quality media frequently both misunderstands and misrepresents psychology. This is not surprising -- few science correspondents and even fewer general journalists have psychology degrees.
PsyBlog provides an insider's view of psychology without the journalistic sensationalism. Posts are based on articles in reputable academic journals, but without the academic terminology. It covers relationships, emotions, careers, work, stress, health, depression, music, personality, memory and loads more.
Examples
Recent PsyBlog posts that had me thinking about jury applications include:
"Good Wine Increases Food Consumption By 12%." If you tell people they're drinking California wine, they eat more of their dinner than they do if you tell them the wine is from North Dakota. "[I]f the wine is good, the food should be good as well," Dean posits as one possible explanation. If that's true, how far does it go? Is there a broader "quality carryover"? Maybe I should wear a nicer suit to court.
"What Is The Point Of Psychology Studies?" In a short and thoughtful post, Dean takes on the common criticism in all its forms: ""Why do we need this study?" or "This just tells us what we already know!" or, "Rubbish!"
"People Playing The Field More Angry At Infidelity." Anything that describes how a concrete fact about a person's background is likely to bear on that person's reactions is something a trial lawyer ought to read.
"Ageing And The Positivity Effect," reviewing a study suggesting older people process positive emotions better than they do negative ones. What might this mean for older jurors in an unpleasant case?
So subscribe to PsyBlog, together with Psychology and Crime News and Deception Blog. In future posts here, more places where lawyers can stay current with psychology.
(Photo by Victoria Peckham at http://www.flickr.com/photos/victoriapeckham/335264565/; license details there.)
