When I read articles about quirks of human behavior, I try to think of how I can take advantage of them both defensively and offensively. For example, when I read an article (from the American Society of Trial Consultants’ The Jury Expert magazine) entitled How We Can Help Witnesses Remember More, I consider not only the article’s answers to its titular question for use with helpful witnesses, but also how I can turn the same psychological knowledge around to prevent unhelpful witnesses from rembering more (answer: create auditory or visual distractions).

The excellent articles in The Jury Expert are generally focused on dealing with the irrational oddities of our minds in order to make trial a more rational process. For instance, Anticipate and Influence Juror Reactions to Successful Women and the comments following (Anne Reed, who wrote one of the comments, blogged about the research behind this article back in January) discuss “reduc[ing] female jurors’ feelings of self-threat in response to a successful woman while not diminishing perceptions of competence” and “protect[ing] successful women in the courtroom from suffering from ‘penalties for success'”:

Both male and female jurors are likely to make negative personal attributions about a woman who has achieved success in a traditionally masculine domain. For women jurors, this is often motivated by self-protection. The research reviewed here offers suggestions for how lawyers can mitigate these responses to successful women in the courtroom.

This is a noble and honorable goal if the successful woman is on my team. When she is trying to put my client in a box, however, I don’t have any qualms about using the same research to help the women on the jury hate her.