We pay close attention to the changing demographics here in the US in general and particularly in the venues that involve our client cases. We want to keep abreast of how the country as a whole is shifting but need to be aware of the demographics of each area in which we are working. We check venire demographics each time (even if it is an area we’ve worked in recently) to ensure our recruit for pretrial research matches the demographics of the area–and thus, a selection that resembles the group of citizens likely to be appear for jury duty. We

It’s always interesting to go back and see what our readers found most noteworthy during the year. In the Top 10 (presented today and on Thursday) you will see some serious posts based on research findings with application to your work. You will also see not so serious posts that have attracted your attention. Enjoy! Post No. 10: Steady eye contact can make it hard to think!  We like to reference pop culture when it’s relevant (and even when it’s not sometimes) to help you take in the lesson in the research highlighted. This one references the TV show Friends

  We know you will be shocked by this but we are featuring two articles with opposite perspectives on Millennials as managers. One article offers support to the Millennial new to managing those who are (in some cases) the age of their parents. The second says Millennial managers cause “negative emotions” in the workplace (spurred on by the anger of their older subordinates). It’s like the two positions we often hear on the internet—either a positive perspective advocating education and support for Millennials or a negative perspective that we don’t think really makes sense (and that is certainly not consistent

Today’s highlighted research looks at ways to communicate with people who ignore evidence that contradicts their beliefs and values. This tendency is called “dogmatism” and essentially reflects one’s (un)willingness to revise their beliefs when presented with new evidence. And some people simply will not revise their beliefs no matter what the evidence! We’ve all seen it—the self-appointed expert who knows they are right while others are so very wrong. In fact, we’ve seen it so often in pretrial research that we wrote a post on a way to dethrone that self-appointed expert. This is a very interesting study that may

We’d really rather call this the “34 reasons you should get up and talk face-to-face rather than emailing or texting effect” but that’s probably why we’re not academics. It’s become habitual to email or text even when it is faster and perhaps easier to walk across the hall, over to another cubicle, or even take a quick ride up the elevator to speak to a colleague in person. But once you read the results of this study you may start moving around—especially when you really want someone you do not know to do something for you. Today’s study is from

We’ve written about CRISPR (aka human gene editing) before, and wanted to share this new survey with you. When last we blogged, it was to cover the Pew survey on fears about gene editing (and the potential for creation of a super-human). As you can imagine, there was some ambivalence over whether this was a good thing, as well as concerns about the creation of a society where genetically enhanced people ruled those who were not genetically enhanced. Here’s what we wrote a year ago: . You may be surprised at how ambivalent the public is about using these new

Every once in a while we run across a tip in the social sciences research that is just begging to be used in litigation advocacy. A while back we found a UK researcher named Tim Perfect who told us a very simple thing: “When you want to increase both volume and accuracy in witness recall, don’t have them tell a story backwards. Just have them close their eyes! It really does increase the number of accurate observations recalled.” We liked his work so much we asked him to write up his research for publication in The Jury Expert (where many

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recently released a report on racial and ethnic differences in homicides of adult women. After you read this, you will want to be very careful out there! As it happens, homicide is one of the leading causes of death for women in the US who are age 44 or younger. Whether you are more likely to be murdered varies with your race and/or ethnicity. However, one thing does not vary—over half of female victims (where circumstances were known) were killed by “a current or former male intimate partner”. The CDC calls this “intimate partner violence”

Researchers actually study the factors that go into making others see you as a jerk—and help us figure out how to avoid those behaviors. Today’s research is from an international team of researchers in the Netherlands, the US and the UK. Their work is interesting to consider from the perspective of witness preparation of the difficult witness. According to the researchers, most of us work to manage the impressions others have of us and some of us do it quite well. Others fail miserably, however, and these researchers think that failure stems from making poor choices on which impression management

Women often think that “one day” they will garner the professional respect and standing that will stop men from interrupting them when the woman is speaking. Today we are presenting two studies of women who’ve reached heights in their professions which most women (and most men for that matter) will never achieve. Both studies tell us the fantasy of speaking without interruption is likely untrue. Harassment of female “Space Scientists Despite all the professed desire to increase the number of women in STEM fields, the working environment experienced by women scientists continues to be hostile. A recent survey of astronomers