Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law

the attorney does not. Here, the reasoning goes like this:

What I just heard surprises me because it appears to hurt

the attorney’s case. But this doesn’t make sense, so it

must not really be all that bad after all. Thus, the research

suggests that mock jurors work on the meaning of the

“thunderous evidence,” so that it is not so thunderous.

Thus, two very different processes appear to be

involved, both of which assist in making stealing thun-

der an effective strategy. One is the relatively heuristic

form of processing that involves simply the impression

of truthfulness that then casts a positive glow on the

attorney, the client, and the attorney’s case. The other

process is a rather effortful and creative process of

twisting the negative information, such that it takes on

a meaning that renders it harmless. This process, pre-

sumably, takes effort and thought.

Kipling D. Williams

See alsoInadmissible Evidence, Impact on Juries; Jury

Competence

Further Readings

Dolnik, L., Case, T. I., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Stealing

thunder as a courtroom tactic revisited: Processes and

boundaries. Law and Human Behavior, 27,265–285.

Howard, M. V. A., Brewer, N., & Williams, K. D. (2006).

How processing resources shape the influence of stealing

thunder on mock-juror verdicts. Psychiatry, Psychology

and Law, 13,60–66.

Williams, K. D., Bourgeois, M., & Croyle, R. T. (1993). The

effects of stealing thunder in criminal and civil trials. Law

and Human Behavior, 17,597–609.

Williams, K. D., & Dolnik, L. (2001). Revealing the worst

first: Stealing thunder as a social influence strategy. In

J. Forgas & K. D. Williams (Eds.),Social influence

processes: Direct and indirect influences (pp. 213–231).

New York: The Psychology Press. (See also V. Hale Starr

interviewing Kipling D. Williams and Lara Dolnik in

“Trial strategy—‘Stealing Thunder’: When it works and

when it doesn’t,”The Trial Lawyer, 23(6), 425–429.)

STORYMODEL FOR

JURORDECISIONMAKING

To better explain how jurors make decisions in trial, psy-

chologists have proposed a variety of decision-making

models. Some research has examined the decision-

making process at the jury level, but the majority of

research has examined juror decision-making

processes at the individual level. These models are typ-

ically grouped into two categories: explanation-based

models and mathematical models. The story model is

the most popular explanation-based model and was

developed by Nancy Pennington and Reid Hastie. The

story model rests on the assumption that jurors orga-

nize evidence they hear during trial in a narrative, sto-

rylike format. According to the story model, the

process of decision making takes place in three steps:

story construction, learning verdict alternatives, and

rendering a verdict. The story model not only describes

the process the juror undergoes when making a deci-

sion in a trial but claims that the story constructed by

the juror ultimately determines the verdict chosen by

the juror.

Story Construction

In a typical trial, the evidence is presented to jurors in a

disconnected format over several days. Not only are

witnesses often not presented in a logical, temporally

relevant order, but the actual content of the witnesses’

testimonies is also disconnected, in that witnesses are

providing information in reaction to attorney questions

rather than narrating the sequence of events. According

to the story model, jurors play an activerole during the

trial by gathering the evidentiary information and orga-

nizing it into a comprehensive narrative with a causal

structure, describing the sequence of events under ques-

tion. That is, they actively place the evidence gathered

at the trial into a “story” to account for what actually

occurred. In constructing the story, they use three

things: the evidence presented at trial (e.g., the infor-

mation gained from witnesses), their personal knowl-

edge of similar events (e.g., knowledge gained from

personal experiences, media portrayals, or secondhand

accounts of a particular crime), and their expectations

for what makes a complete story (e.g., knowing that

actions are usually preceded by intentions or goals).

In addition to describing how the jurors construct

their stories, the story model describes the structure of

those stories. Specifically, stories are made up of units

called episodes. An episode is made up of a series of

events that are paired with intentions or motivations to

result in an action. Events, intentions, and motivations

can be taken either from trial or from a juror’s personal

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