Law and Human Behavior最新文献

Objective: False confessions are prevalent in wrongful convictions, and much research has examined investigation factors and interrogation methods that can contribute to false confessions. However, not all these factors are under the control of the legal system, and improving the effectiveness of interrogation methods has a limited effect on evaluating the veracity of confessions. We suggest incorporating an important but often-neglected factor in interrogations: suspects' prior probability of guilt ("the prior," a Bayesian term meaning suspects' likelihood of being guilty before police conduct an interrogation).

Method: By connecting interrogation practices to probability concepts, we discuss a gap in the literature between questions traditionally answered by lab research and a distinct question faced by the legal system.

Results: On the basis of our analysis, we argue that police should increase priors by collecting additional evidence to satisfy an evidence-based suspicion of guilt before interrogating suspects.

Conclusions: Implementing the evidence-based suspicion practice can help police reduce false confessions, reallocate investigation time and resources, and assist prosecutors in building strong cases for trial. Likewise, researchers should expand the empirical and legal questions they ask and incorporate priors into their interrogation experiments to improve the generalizability of findings to the criminal justice system. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: This hypothetical vignette-based experiment was designed to better understand judges' and probation officers' interpretations and use of juvenile risk assessment tools in their decision-making around restrictive sanctions and confinement of youths on the basis of the youths' risk level and race.

Hypotheses: We expected that estimates of the probability of juvenile recidivism would significantly mediate the relationship between a categorical risk descriptor and decisions regarding the ordering confinement of youths. We also hypothesized that youths' race would serve as a significant moderator in the model.

Method: Judicial and probation staff (N = 309) read a two-part vignette about a youth who was arrested for the first time; in this vignette, race (Black, White) and risk level (low, moderate, high, very high) of the youth were varied. Participants were asked to estimate the likelihood that the youth would recidivate in the following year and their likelihood of ordering or recommending residential placement.

Results: Although we found no simple, significant relationship between risk level and confinement decisions, judicial and probation staff estimated higher likelihoods of recidivism as risk-level categories increased and ordered out-of-home placements at increased rates as their estimations of the youth's likelihood of recidivation increased. The youth's race did not moderate the model.

Conclusion: The greater the probability of recidivism, the more likely each judge or probation officer was to order or recommend out-of-home placement. However, importantly, legal decisionmakers appeared to apply categorical risk assessment data to their confinement decisions using their own interpretations of risk category rather than being guided empirically on the basis of risk-level categories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Objectives: We sought to understand how basic competencies in moral reasoning influence the application of private, institutional, and legal rules.

Hypotheses: We predicted that moral appraisals, implicating both outcome-based and mental state reasoning, would shape participants' interpretation of rules and statutes-and asked whether these effects arise differentially under intuitive and reflective reasoning conditions.

Method: In six vignette-based experiments (total N = 2,473; 293 university law students [67% women; age bracket mode: 18-22 years] and 2,180 online workers [60% women; mean age = 31.9 years]), participants considered a wide range of written rules and laws and determined whether a protagonist had violated the rule in question. We manipulated morally relevant aspects of each incident-including the valence of the rule's purpose (Study 1) and of the outcomes that ensued (Studies 2 and 3), as well as the protagonist's accompanying mental state (Studies 5 and 6). In two studies, we simultaneously varied whether participants decided under time pressure or following a forced delay (Studies 4 and 6).

Results: Moral appraisals of the rule's purpose, the agent's extraneous blameworthiness, and the agent's epistemic state impacted legal determinations and helped to explain participants' departure from rules' literal interpretation. Counter-literal verdicts were stronger under time pressure and were weakened by the opportunity to reflect.

Conclusions: Under intuitive reasoning conditions, legal determinations draw on core competencies in moral cognition, such as outcome-based and mental state reasoning. In turn, cognitive reflection dampens these effects on statutory interpretation, allowing text to play a more influential role. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: Although there are many lab-based studies demonstrating the utility of confidence and decision time as indicators of eyewitness accuracy, there is almost no research on how well these variables function for lineups in the real world. In two experiments, we examined confidence and decision time associated with real lineups that had been conducted using research-based recommendations.

Hypotheses: We expected that how confident an eyewitness sounded and how quickly that eyewitness made their identification would be associated with whether that eyewitness identified a suspect or a filler. We also hypothesized that people's interpretations of eyewitness confidence could be easily influenced by additional, biasing information.

Method: Using audio recordings of these lineups, we examined (a) participants' subjective ratings of how confident an eyewitness sounded at the time of the identification and (b) objective data regarding how quickly the eyewitness made the identification decision. We also manipulated what additional information, if any, participants received in Experiment 2.

Results: In both experiments, decision time and confidence predicted whether the eyewitnesses identified the suspect or a known-innocent filler, and when decision time and confidence diverged, it is likely that the eyewitness identified a filler. In Experiment 2, we found that people's interpretations of eyewitness's confidence statements could be biased. When observers believed that the witness picked a filler rather than a suspect, or vice versa, this changed how confident they thought the witness sounded.

Conclusions: Confidence and decision time should both be collected when administering real lineups, but objective decision time data may be the most useful because people's perceptions of confidence are easily altered. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: Because confessions are sometimes unreliable, it is important to understand how jurors evaluate confession evidence. We conducted a content analysis testing an attribution theory model for mock jurors' discussion of coerced confession evidence in determining verdicts.

Hypotheses: We tested exploratory hypotheses regarding mock jurors' discussion of attributions and elements of the confession. We expected that jurors' prodefense statements, external attributions (attributing the confession to coercion), and uncontrollable attributions (attributing the confession to defendant naivety) would predict more prodefense than proprosecution case judgments. We also expected that being male, politically conservative, and in support of the death penalty would predict proprosecution statements and internal attributions, which in turn would predict guilty verdicts.

Method: Mock jurors (N = 253, M_age = 47 years; 65% women; 88% White, 10% Black, 1% Hispanic, 1% listed "other") read a murder trial synopsis, watched an actual coerced false confession, completed case judgments, and deliberated in juries of up to 12 members. We videotaped, transcribed, and reliably coded deliberations.

Results: Most mock jurors (53%) rendered a guilty verdict. Participants made more prodefense than proprosecution statements, more external than internal attributions, and more internal than uncontrollable attributions. Participants infrequently mentioned various elements of the interrogation (police coercion, contamination, promises of leniency, interrogation length) and psychological consequences for the defendant. Proprosecution statements and internal attributions predicted proprosecution case judgments. Women made more prodefense and external attribution statements than men, which in turn predicted diminished guilt. Political conservatives and death penalty proponents made more proprosecution statements and internal attributions than their counterparts, respectively, which in turn predicted greater guilt.

Conclusions: Some jurors identified coercive elements of a false confession and rendered external attributions for a defendant's false confession (attributing the confession to the coercive interrogation) during deliberation. However, many jurors made internal attributions, attributing a defendant's false confession to his guilt-attributions that predicted juror and jury inclinations to convict an innocent defendant. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Objectives: Hispanic individuals are a growing proportion of the general and carceral populations in the United States. This study examined the relationship between the type of sentences (prison, jail/probation) given to White, non-Hispanic individuals and to similarly situated individuals who were perceived to be Hispanic (any race) or perceived to be White but, based on validated estimates, self-identified as Hispanic.

Hypotheses: Psychological theory indicates that, for group-based stereotypes and attitudes to impact decisions, decisionmakers must first identify and categorize target individuals as members of the relevant group. Following this theory, we predicted that individuals perceived by members of the criminal justice system to be Hispanic will be more likely to be sentenced to prison than similarly situated individuals perceived to be White. However, sentences of individuals predicted to have been misperceived as White but to self-identify as Hispanic will not differ from those of individuals accurately perceived as White.

Method: We analyzed official state records of more than 220,000 unique sentencing decisions for nearly 200,000 individuals under state correctional supervision between 2005 and 2018, including demographic characteristics, statutory crime-seriousness and criminal-history scores from state sentencing guidelines, and sentencing outcomes.

Results: Even after controlling for crime severity and criminal history, we found that individuals who were labeled as Hispanic in criminal justice records were nearly twice as likely to be sentenced to prison as those who were labeled as White (odds ratio [OR] = 1.95, 95% confidence interval [CI] [1.86, 2.04]). By comparison, individuals who were labeled in criminal justice records as White but, on the basis of validated estimates, were predicted to self-identify as Hispanic had the same likelihood of being sentenced to prison as individuals who were accurately perceived to be White (OR = 1.01, 95% CI [0.94, 1.07]).

Conclusions: Results suggest that ethnic stereotypes or attitudes regarding Hispanic individuals may negatively impact criminal sentencing decisions regarding people perceived as Hispanic by actors in the legal system. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: Recently, experimental work on racial bias in legal settings has diverged from real-world field data demonstrating racial disparities, instead often producing null or potential overcorrection effects favoring Black individuals over White individuals. We explored the role of social desirability in these counterintuitive effects and tested whether allowing participants to establish nonracist moral credentials increased their willingness to convict a Black defendant.

Hypotheses: We predicted that establishing nonracist moral credentials would increase convictions of Black defendants-especially for participants likely to harbor racial bias and external motivation to control it.

Method: In two experiments, we randomly assigned White mock jurors (Study 1: N = 1,018; Study 2: N = 1,253) to establish nonracist moral credentials by acquitting a Black defendant in an initial case, acquit a White defendant in the same case, or see no prior case. Next, they judged an ambiguous case against a Black (Studies 1 and 2) or White (Study 2) defendant. After choosing verdicts, they provided open-ended guesses of what the study was about. Participants completed measures of explicit prejudice, motivations to control prejudice, and political orientation.

Results: Most participants who were asked to judge at least one Black defendant guessed that the study was about racial bias and convicted Black defendants less often than did those who guessed the study was about something else. White participants who established nonracist credentials were significantly more likely to convict Black defendants compared with White participants who did not establish nonracist credentials. Subsequent analyses revealed that conservatives showed this predicted credentialing pattern, whereas liberals did not. Credentialed liberals' convictions of Black defendants remained low; instead, they convicted White defendants more than did noncredentialed liberals.

Conclusions: Social desirability plays a clear role in whether White people acquit Black defendants in experiments, which does not align with persistent racial bias in the legal system. Research participants' concern about looking prejudiced might undermine the validity of experiments investigating racial bias in legal settings by artificially inflating pro-Black judgments. The opportunity to credential oneself as nonracist, however, might make conservatives more comfortable making anti-Black legal judgments-whereas credentialed liberals continue to judge Black individuals more favorably than White individuals in legal settings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: Given the greater contact that Black youth have with the legal system compared with White youth, it is important to consider the differential ways that police use of force against these youth is perceived. Black youth may be at greater risk than White youth for animalistic (being seen as animal-like) and mechanistic (being seen as object-like) dehumanization, which, along with a tendency for Black youth to be perceived as older (adultification), may impact observers' perceptions of police use of force toward Black youth. This study examined whether dehumanization and adultification were associated with the perceptions of force used and harm caused by police.

Hypotheses: We made five hypotheses. First, participants would dehumanize Black individuals more than White individuals, more mechanistically dehumanize Black women than Black men, and more animalistically dehumanize Black men than Black women. Second, dehumanization would be positively associated with adultification. Third, force would be rated as less appropriate and more excessive for White than for Black targets, particularly for males. Fourth, dehumanization, particularly animalistic dehumanization, would be associated with higher participant ratings of force justification and lower participant ratings of force severity and excessiveness. Fifth, participants would perceive girls as more harmed than boys and White individuals as more harmed than Black individuals.

Method: After completing an implicit dehumanization measure, participants viewed an image (varied on age and gender) of a juvenile, estimated the juvenile's age, and read a vignette in which the juvenile had an altercation with police. Participants rated the amount, severity, and justification of the force used by the officer as well as the physical and emotional harm caused to the juvenile.

Results: We found that Black targets were dehumanized more than White targets. Adultification, unrelated to implicit dehumanization, predicted perceiving police use of force against juveniles as more justified and less severe. Black girls were most likely to experience adultification; participants generally perceived them as less victimized than Black boys and White girls.

Conclusions: Adultification is associated with fewer protections for youth. Those with particular intersectional identities, such as Black girls, may be uniquely vulnerable to harm caused by police victimization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).