Reconstructing Reality in the Courtroom: Justice and Judgment in American Culture

Reconstructing Reality in the Courtroom explains what makes stories believable and how ordinary people connect complex legal arguments and evidence presented in trials to assess guilt and innocence. The explanation takes the core elements of narrative-the who, what, where, when, how, why-and shows how average people who hear hundreds of stories every day use the connections between these elements to assess credibility.

A series of simple experiments outside the courtroom provides…