Perceptions of older adult jurors: the influence of aging stereotypes and jury laws

ABSTRACT

The present study examined younger (18–30 years, N = 100) and older adults’ (66–89 years, N = 100) responses to a jury duty questionnaire assessing perceptions of jury duty, their capability to serve, and the capability of older adults to serve. We also explored perceptions of the senior jury opt-out law (a law that allows those over a certain age (e.g. 65 years) to opt-out of jury duty). We assessed why participants believe this law is in place and experimentally examined if informing older adults about this law impacted their jury questionnaire responses. Results demonstrated that older adults were significantly more likely to want to serve compared to younger adults; however, younger adults provided lower capability ratings of older adult jurors compared to older adults. Younger adults’ open-ended explanations for these ratings indicated negative aging stereotypes (i.e. in part, believing that older adult jurors are less capable because of declining health and biased beliefs). Older adults also had a significantly lower rate of agreement with the senior jury opt-out law. Although informing older adults about this law did not impact their perceptions of themselves as potential jurors, it did enforce more negative attitudes towards older adult jurors as a whole.

KEYWORDS:

• Jury duty
• older adults
• aging stereotypes
• jury summons

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The present study was supported in part by grants from the American Psychology Law Society Grants-in-Aid Program awarded to the first author and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight grant awarded to the second author.