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Self-interest always runs a good race.” 53You might think self-interest would take aback seat to morality among students at the Princeton Theological Seminary, especiallythose who had been preparing to videotape a presentation about the story of the GoodSamaritan. If so, you would be disappointed. Told that they were late for thevideotaping session, most of the students walked right past a man who was slumped inan alleyway, coughing and groaning. 54Their own agenda, presenting a speech in theirrole as a member of the tribe of academia, had become more important than offering tohelp a stranger who seemed to be injured, even when the speech they were going topresent was about charity for the less fortunate.As the Princeton study illustrates, self-interest isn’t triggered only by money or materialgoods. We also can play on juror’s self-interest by framing our arguments in ways thatconfirm their views. For example, Harry Plotkin, a jury consultant from Los Angeles,notes that self-interest can motivate a safety-conscious juror to overlook evidence that aproduct may be unsafe. The juror may be uncomfortable thinking that manufacturersare distributing dangerous products, so assigning fault to the user makes the juror feelthe world works the way they would prefer. 55Bob Cialdini, a professor at Arizona State, has identified six evolutionary persuasionprinciples that can trigger self-interest. They are:• scarcity (the less there is of something, the more we want it),53 Dutton, supra note 5 at 169.54 Id.55 Harry Plotkin, “Leveraging you jurors’ self-interest,” August 2008(http://www.yournextjury.com/jt0808.htm, last accessed on 12/8/2014).27