Knowledge-telling and knowledge-transforming arguments in mock jurors' verdict justifications

Abstract

According to the “story model” a juror constructs an implicit mental model of a story telling what happened as the basis for the verdict choice. But the explicit justification of a verdict choice could take the form of a story (knowledge telling) or the form of a relational (knowledge-transforming) argument structure that brings together diverse, non-chronologically related pieces of evidence. The study investigates whether people tend towards knowledge telling or knowledge transforming, and whether use of these argument structure types are related to skilled argument and epistemic understanding. A sample of people on jury duty chose and justified verdicts in two abridged cases. Participants tended to display the same argument structure and argument skill across cases. Those using knowledge-transforming structures were more successful at the juror argument skills task and had a higher level of epistemic understanding. The discussion suggests that jurors approach their task with an epistemic orientation towards knowledge telling or knowledge transforming.

Keywords:

• Argument skills
• Argument structure
• Epistemic understanding
• Juror reasoning

Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by a Dean's Grant for Student Research from the Office of the Dean, Teacher's College, Columbia University. I would like to thank Robin Flaton, Shari Becker, and Matt Cronin, my collaborators in coding, and Susan Goldman, Jennifer Wiley, James Voss, and Iris Tabak for their careful attention and most helpful comments in the preparation of this paper.

Notes

¹The case, from the appeal record of Richard John Jahnke v. State of Wyoming, 682 P.2d 1991, was referred to us by Austin Sarat, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.

²The inter-rater agreement is a variation on Cohen's Kappa used when the marginal proportions are not fixed (Brennan & Prediger, 1981; von Eye, 2006).