This chapter discusses the promise and the pitfalls of conducting social psychological research on mock jurors. The tremendous potential of this methodology to shed light on the psychology of jury decision-making is only beginning to be tapped. We use two recent experiments on the psychology of character assessments as case studies to explore some of the necessary tradeoffs in this methodological design, and to showcase the importance of understanding the psychological underpinnings of our legal doctrines. However, future research must present more diverse stimuli that better reflect the racial and gender composition of parties in real trials. Recognizing how hard it can be to replicate complex psychological processes experimentally, we argue that in some cases we should switch the burden of proof – that is, near-universal psychological processes should be presumed to also occur in the courtroom.