A social judgment? Extralegal contrast effects in hypothetical legal decision making.
Social judgments in ambiguous situations often rely on heuristics and biases, and legal decision makers are often faced with evidence that does not clearly favor one decision over another. Across two studies, we tested whether one extralegal factor, contrast cases, influenced decision making when judicial factors were held constant. In Study 1, participants (n = 100) evaluated whether an imagined prosecutor had sufficient evidence to send the same three target cases to trial. Before deciding these cases, though, the participants first evaluated cases with either relatively stronger or weaker evidence than the targets. Thos...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - November 29, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Support, reluctance, and production in child abuse investigative interviews.
Child abuse victims are required to participate in stressful forensic investigations but often fail to fully report details about their victimization. Especially in intrafamilial abuse cases, children’s emotional states presumably involve reluctance to report abuse. The current study examined the effects of interviewers’ support on children’s reluctance and production of information when interviewed. The sample comprised 200 interviews of 6- to 14-year-old suspected victims of physical abuse perpetrated by a family member. Interviews followed the NICHD (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) Revise...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - November 8, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
The heterogeneity of victim impact statements: A content analysis of capital trial sentencing penalty phase transcripts.
Victim impact statements (VISs) are controversial in capital sentencing proceedings largely due to their questionable relevance to sentencing, the concern that characterizations of the victim may lead to arbitrary sentencing judgments, and the belief that the emotional nature of this evidence may be inflammatory. A sample of 192 capital trial VIS transcripts was analyzed for content as well as a linguistic analysis of emotionality. The findings reveal that these statements are highly varied, including their format, length, and relation between the witness and the victim. Despite a legislative mandate that they address the ...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - November 8, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
A survey of potential jurors’ perceptions of interrogations and confessions.
Confessions represent one of the most influential types of evidence, and research has shown that mock jurors often fail to dismiss unreliable confession evidence. However, recent studies suggest that jurors might believe in the false confession phenomenon more than they once did. One possible reason for this could be increased publicity regarding false confession cases. To assess this possibility, we administered an extensive online survey to a sample of potential jurors in the United States from 11 universities and Amazon Mechanical Turk. Perceptions of confession behaviors (as related to others and oneself), Miranda waiv...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - November 8, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
The impact of waiver to adult court on youths’ perceptions of procedural justice.
The current study examined perceptions of fair treatment in a past court experience among a sample of incarcerated youth (n = 364). Perceptions were compared for youth whose cases were processed through juvenile (n = 261) versus adult court (n = 103) systems. In general, youth who were adjudicated in adult court felt more justly treated by legal authorities than youth adjudicated in juvenile court. Specifically, youth in adult court rated judges as only marginally more just than youth in juvenile court, but rated their defense attorney’s treatment as significantly more just. Youth rated the prosecutor’s treatment as re...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - November 8, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Attitudes, knowledge, practices, and ethical beliefs of psychologists related to spanking: A survey of American Psychological Association division members.
The current study examined attitudes, ethical beliefs, and professional practices related to spanking in a sample of American Psychological Association (APA) division members and represented a replication and extension of a similar survey conducted 18 years ago. We administered an online survey to 3,000 randomly selected members of 10 APA divisions. A total of 782 members completed the survey for a response rate of 28%. Findings indicated that overwhelmingly, psychologists are opposed to parental use of spanking. The majority of APA division members believe that spanking is a bad disciplinary technique (83%), that it is ha...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - November 8, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Third-party support for retribution, rehabilitation, and giving an offender a clean slate.
When crimes occur, there is third-party support for retributive justice, but is there also support for the idea that punishments should give offenders clean slates? In addition, how might support for rehabilitation compare with support for retribution, and with support for giving a clean slate? Two studies tested how crime severity affected support for the 3 sentencing objectives: retribution, rehabilitation, and giving an offender a clean slate. Further, the studies tested whether anger and compassion toward the offender mediated the relationships between crime severity and the sentencing objectives. Results show that as ...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - October 11, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
The differential impacts of probation staff attitudes on use of evidence-based practices.
The evidence-based policy movement has become an important feature of community corrections systems. As part of this movement, community corrections agencies emphasize the use of standardized assessments to inform case planning with probationers. Despite evidence supporting the use of these practices, research documents many challenges with implementation of these best practices in routine probation work. However, little attention has been paid to the impact of staff attitudes toward use of evidence-based practices on correctional reform. Using hierarchical linear modeling, the current study examined the predictors of atti...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - October 11, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Parents’ understanding of the juvenile dependency system.
A great deal of attention has been devoted to documenting the legal experiences and knowledge of children involved in the juvenile dependency system (i.e., child protection system). Such insight is critical to inform policies that profoundly affect children and families. However, the experiences and knowledge of another population involved in the dependency system are also critically important—namely those of the children’s parents. Parents’ understanding has enormous potential to affect their behaviors, ongoing decisions in the case, and the eventual case outcome. In the current study, 105 parents involved in ongoin...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - September 10, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Law and moral order: The influence of legal outcomes on moral judgment.
The current project explores a surprisingly overlooked question regarding the influence of legal outcomes on people’s personal morality. In 4 studies utilizing different scenarios of ethically questionable behavior, we compared the influence of 4 potential legal outcomes: indictment, conviction, exoneration, and closing the case without charges (Studies 1–4); we also examined the influence of these outcomes against the benchmark of people’s default moral positions in the absence of legal information (Studies 3–4), and looked at the role of legitimacy as a potential moderator (Studies 2–3). Results revealed that, ...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - August 6, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Children’s conversational memory regarding a minor transgression and a subsequent interview.
Children’s memories for their conversations are commonly explored in child abuse cases. In 2 studies, we examined conversational recall in 154 4- to 9-year-old children’s reports of an interaction with a stranger, some of whom were complicit in a transgression and were admonished to keep it a secret. Immediately afterward, all children were interviewed about their interaction. One week later, children were asked recall questions about their interaction with the stranger, their conversations with the stranger, and their conversations with the interviewer. Overall, interaction recall questions elicited few details about ...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - August 6, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Perpetually stigmatized: False confessions prompt underlying mechanisms that motivate negative perceptions of exonerees.
Even in the fortunate instances of being exonerated of their wrongful convictions, exonerees often struggle to assimilate back into society. Although research has established that exonerees experience stigma and a general lack of reintegration support, little is known about underlying reasons that motivate such negative perceptions. This research examined whether the evidence and crime associated with a wrongful conviction could initiate a process that alters people’s perceptions of exonerees’ intelligence and mental health status, and, in turn, undermine people’s judgments of exonerees’ guilt and subsequent willin...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - August 6, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
The media’s impact on the right to a fair trial: A content analysis of pretrial publicity in capital cases.
This study examines whether and how the right to a fair and impartial jury may be compromised by prejudicial news media coverage of death penalty cases. Using a unique data set of historic newspaper coverage of 20 capital cases in California in which defendants filed change of venue motions, we conducted a detailed content analysis of 1,831 newspaper articles to examine the nature and extent of the pretrial publicity in each case. We used a detailed coding scheme with 27 content categories to describe the types of information conveyed; analyze the relative amounts of negative, positive, and neutral content in the publicity...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - August 6, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Eyewitness identification: Live, photo, and video lineups.
The medium used to present lineup members for eyewitness identification varies according to the location of the criminal investigation. Although in some jurisdictions live lineups remain the default procedure, elsewhere this practice has been replaced with photo or video lineups. This divergence leads to two possibilities: Either some jurisdictions are not using the lineup medium that best facilitates accurate eyewitness identification or the lineup medium has no bearing on the accuracy of eyewitness identification. Photo and video lineups are the more practical options, but proponents of live lineups believe witnesses mak...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - August 6, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
“Youth-perpetrated child sexual abuse: The effects of age at court on legal outcomes”: Correction to Vargen et al. (2018).
Reports an error in "Youth-perpetrated child sexual abuse: The effects of age at court on legal outcomes" by Lee M. Vargen, Camille C. Weinsheimer, Patricia I. Coburn, Kristin Chong and Deborah A. Connolly (Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2018[May], Vol 24[2], 248-258). In the article, there was an error in Table 2 of the Results. A statistic and its corresponding p value are missing and can be found on the erratum. In addition, the Giroux et al. reference is listed as “submitted”. The referenced article has now been published and the correct citation is shown in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - August 6, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
