Juries are Different: Racial and Ethnic Differences in Trust Across Legal Institutions

Objective: We explored how White, Black, and Hispanic people rated their trust in juries, whether these patterns differed from trust in courts, what potential mechanisms might help explain any observed differences, and what potential outcomes might be associated with them. Hypotheses: We expected White participants to have the most trust in juries (hypothesis 1) and Black participants to have the least trust in juries (hypothesis 2). We expected Hispanic participants to have more trust in juries than Black participants (hypothesis 3). However, given inconsistencies in the existing literature, we did not make definitive predictions for Hispanic compared to White participants; they may have less trust in juries than White people (hypothesis 4a) or may not significantly differ from White people (hypothesis 4b).Method: Participants were 1,220 adults (406 White, 410 Black, 404 Hispanic) recruited from Prolific Academic (M age = 39.31, 53% female) who rated their trust in juries (α = .97, Bornstein et al., 2020), trust in courts (α = .87, Tyler & Sevier, 2014), and answered exploratory measures about potential mechanisms or consequences related to trust.Results: Patterns for trust in juries were distinct from those for trust in courts. White and Black participants reported higher trust in juries than Hispanic participants, but White participants reported higher trust in courts than Black and Hispanic participants. There was also an indirect effect on trust in juries through perceived representativeness in which Black and Hispanic participants perceived juries as less representative of their own racial or ethnic group and, in turn, had less trust in juries.Conclusions: Results extend the existing literature on institutional trust by demonstrating unique racial and ethnic patterns on trust in juries. They also underscore the role of perceived representativeness, highlighting the importance of increasing the diversity of juries. Such efforts can increase trust in juries and have downstream effects on legal behaviors.