PhD Research, Swansea University

Professor Worthington is working collaboratively with Dr Claire Williams and Dr Ruth Horry from Swansea University on this project.

A 3 year research project into how jurors and others in the legal system perceive defendants with a history of traumatic brain injury (TBI).

People with brain injury are over-represented in prison populations and surveys indicate significant misconceptions about brain injuries amongst the general public. Jurors find it difficult to discount irrelevant or prejudicial information, even when they are instructed to do so. 

The project will involve a series of experiments, in which participant-jurors and others read information about fictitious cases, in which some key piece of information (e.g., the presence of neuroimaging evidence, or the presence of physical sequelae of the brain injury) is manipulated, and the impact of those pieces of information on juror decisions will be assessed.