Promote Relatedness

Jurors are hostages.

To reverse the threat jury selection creates we’ve been looking at the Five ‘P’s’:

1. Preserve Status
2. Provide Certainty
3. Protect Autonomy
4. Promote Relatedness
5. Prove Fairness

Today let’s look at how to Promote Relatedness.

Years ago, I traveled to Wisconsin to help an attorney pick a jury for a medical malpractice case. Voir dire began on Monday, so the attorney arranged for a mock jury on Sunday for practice. The jury was scheduled to arrive at 1:30 p.m. He also scheduled a lunch meeting with the plaintiff at noon. Unfortunately, the restaurant screwed up our order and we ended up being over an hour late for the mock jury. When we walked into the church where the mock jury had assembled, the attorney was shocked. Even though this group had sat together for over an hour waiting for our arrival, the room was completely silent. No one spoke or made eye contact. The air was thick with tension.

This is what you face in the courtroom, isn’t it?

Jurors don’t know you, defense counsel, the judge or each other. The brain views lack of relatedness as an attack.

The number one thing you can do in voir dire to tap into the reward center of a juror’s brain is to form the group. Groups are the most powerful organisms on earth; we want to form a group not just to promote relatedness between jurors, but to also make it easier to get a verdict in our favor.

Many people think that time is what gets groups to form; that by simply being together the group will form and bond, but this is not the case. Time alone doesn’t form groups. You do.

Group formation benefits both jurors and you in a variety of ways:

1. Forming the group creates safety. Humans are pack animals. It feels unsafe to navigate new and unforeseen territory, such as a trial, on our own. When jurors feel related to each other, they feel safe and safety reverses the threat response.
   
2. Forming the group reduces the need for autonomy. Once the group is formed there is less of a need for autonomy, the one need in the SCARF model you are least able to compensate for. When people feel that they belong and are doing important work they are more willing to give up their autonomy.  
3. Forming the group allows you to lead. If there’s no group, there’s no need for a leader. People lead themselves; that’s the basic definition of autonomy. But once the group is formed, they need and are willing to be led, especially if you’re the one that formed them in the first place.

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So how do you form a group? 

Groups are primarily formed nonverbally. There are four nonverbal areas you can utilize for group formation: Eyes, Voice, Body and Breathing. To get a group to form you must get them to:

• Look at each other (eyes)
• Talk to each other (voice)
• Do things together (body)
• Breathe together (breathing)

Think of the last cocktail party or networking event you attended. You most likely avoided making eye contact with people you didn’t know. However, once the host introduced you to someone else, you now made eye contact. The introduction gave you permission to look at each other.

This is what you have to do with jurors during voir dire. 

Here’s how: once a juror is finished speaking, hold your hand out to him or her and then gesture and look at another juror and ask, “Is what you’re saying any different than [Name of Second Juror]?” It is very important that you look at the second juror, not the first. We are trained to maintain eye contact with the person who is speaking. Merely gesturing to another person while holding eye contact with the first won’t make them look there. However, people look where you look. If you look at the second person while asking the question of the first person, there is an 80% chance the first juror will turn and look at the juror you are looking at. 

By doing this, you have now given these two jurors permission to look and talk to each other. Continue to do this with as many jurors as possible and your group will start to form.

You can also form your group by getting jurors to do things together. Simple things like having everyone raise their hand at the same time help the group to form. Why? When people do things together, they feel like a group. Why does the military have soldiers march? To form the group. Why do we sing the national anthem before sporting events? To form the group. 

Finally, you help form the group by getting them to breathe. We know the jurors are in fight or flight because jury selection invokes a threat response. You can reverse the fight or flight response by breathing deeply yourself. Breathing together as a group helps them form.

Want to help jurors move from hostage to hero? Preserve their status. Provide them with certainty. Protect their autonomy. Promote Relatedness. Next time we’ll talk about the fifth and final P: Prove Fairness.