Abstract
This study examined the citizen judge's sentencing decisions from "asymmetric perceptions" to crime victim's statements. "Asymmetric perceptions" is the phenomenon that people see others as more influenced by particular strong messages than themselves. In this study, the determination factors and the consequence of asymmetric perceptions composed of impact-perceptions to others and self were examined. Some 100 undergraduates were subjected to a description about citizen judge system and victim participant system which were introduced in recent years in Japanese criminal trial and they answered their own attitude for or against victim participant system. After reading a fictional accidental mortality case and its trial scenario, they made answer impacts to other judges and themselves by crime victim's statements presented in the scenario. In the instruction, whether other judges were legally-professional or not was manipulated (lay person vs. law school students). Finally, participants made sentencing decisions to the defendant pleaded guilty. ANOVA revealed that the mock judges showed asymmetric perceptions in respect to crime victim's statements under the "lay person" condition. As predicted, when other judges were law school students, participants considered the victim's statements had smaller impact to other judges. In this condition, an asymmetric perception disappeared. Furthermore, as an earlier study showed, participants who oppose victim participant system see the victim's statements as having smaller impact on themselves, and imposed a more lenient punishment to the defendant. The results are suggestive that the findings of asymmetric perceptions in medias impact-study are applicable to judiciary decision-study.
