Faculty and Staff

Prompted by the involvement of psychologists in torturous interrogations at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the American Psychological Association (APA) revised its Ethics Code Standard 1.02 to prohibit psychologists from engaging in activities that would “justify or defend violating human rights.” The revision to Standard 1.02 followed APA policy statements condemning torture and prohibiting psychologists’ involvement in such activities that constitute a violation of human rights (APA, 2010). Cogent questions have subsequently been raised about the involvement of psychologists in other activities that could arguably lead to human rights violations, even if the activity in question is legal. While this language was designed to be expansive in defining psychologists’ ethical responsibilities, it remains difficult to determine whether and how Standard 1.02 might apply to a particular situation.

In the present analysis, we focus on the question of whether psychologists should be involved in death penalty cases. We assert that the APA should not take an ethical stand against psychologists’ participation in death penalty cases. Our position is not intended necessarily to reflect approval or disapproval of the death penalty although we recognize that there are serious flaws in the American legal system with regard to capital punishment. Our perspective is that psychologists have an important role in the administration of due process in capital cases. We oppose a bright-line rule prohibiting psychologists’ involvement in death penalty cases for several reasons. We begin by considering whether the death penalty per se constitutes a human rights violation, move on to describe the basic functioning of the legal system, analyze how the involvement of psychologists actually affects the capital trial process, and end with providing practical advice for psychologists’ provision of ethical services in capital trials.

A qualitative study with 20 board-certified forensic psychologists was followed up by a mail survey of 351 forensic psychologists in this mixed-methods investigation of examiner bias awareness and strategies used to debias forensic judgments. Rich qualitative data emerged about awareness of bias, specific biasing situations that recur in forensic evaluations, and potential debiasing strategies. The continuum of bias awareness in forensic evaluators mapped cogently onto the “stages of change” model. Evaluators perceived themselves as less vulnerable to bias than their colleagues, consistent with the phenomenon called the “bias blind spot.” Recurring situations that posed challenges for forensic clinicians included disliking or feeling sympathy for the defendant, disgust or anger toward the offense, limited cultural competency, preexisting values, colleagues’ influences, and protecting referral streams. Twenty-five debiasing strategies emerged in the qualitative study, all but one of which rated as highly useful in the quantitative survey. Some of those strategies are consistent with empirical evidence about their effectiveness, but others have been shown to be ineffective. We identified which strategies do not help, focused on promising strategies with empirical support, discussed additional promising strategies not mentioned by participants, and described new strategies generated by these participants that have not yet been subjected to empirical examination. Finally, debiasing strategies were considered with respect to future directions for research and forensic practice.

This survey of 206 forensic psychologists tested the “filtering” effects of preexisting expert attitudes in adversarial proceedings. Results confirmed the hypothesis that evaluator attitudes toward capital punishment influence willingness to accept capital case referrals from particular adversarial parties. Stronger death penalty opposition was associated with higher willingness to conduct evaluations for the defense and higher likelihood of rejecting referrals from all sources Conversely, stronger support was associated with higher willingness to be involved in capital cases generally, regardless of referral source. The findings raise the specter of skewed evaluator involvement in capital evaluations, where evaluators willing to do capital casework may have stronger capital punishment support than evaluators who opt out, and evaluators with strong opposition may work selectively for the defense. The results may provide a partial explanation for the “allegiance effect” in adversarial legal settings such that preexisting attitudes may contribute to partisan participation through a self-selection process.

In an anonymous 4-person economic game, participants contributed more money to a common project (i.e., cooperated) when required to decide quickly than when forced to delay their decision (Rand, Greene & Nowak, 2012), a pattern consistent with the social heuristics hypothesis proposed by Rand and colleagues. The results of studies using time pressure have been mixed, with some replication attempts observing similar patterns (e.g., Rand et al., 2014) and others observing null effects (e.g., Tinghög et al., 2013; Verkoeijen & Bouwmeester, 2014). This Registered Replication Report (RRR) assessed the size and variability of the effect of time pressure on cooperative decisions by combining 21 separate, preregistered replications of the critical conditions from Study 7 of the original article (Rand et al., 2012). The primary planned analysis used data from all participants who were randomly assigned to conditions and who met the protocol inclusion criteria (an intent-to-treat approach that included the 65.9% of participants in the time- pressure condition and 7.5% in the forced-delay condition who did not adhere to the time constraints), and we observed a difference in contributions of −0.37 percentage points compared with an 8.6 percentage point difference calculated from the original data. Analyzing the data as the original article did, including data only for participants who complied with the time constraints, the RRR observed a 10.37 percentage point difference in contributions compared with a 15.31 percentage point difference in the original study. In combination, the results of the intent-to-treat analysis and the compliant-only analysis are consistent with the presence of selection biases and the absence of a causal effect of time pressure on cooperation.

Prisoners sentenced to death must be competent for execution before they can actually be executed (Ford v. Wainwright, 1986). The decision for many mental health professionals whether to conduct competence for execution evaluations may be fraught with complex ethical issues. Mental health professionals who do not personally support capital punishment may have a particularly difficult decision to make in this regard but should seriously consider the consequences of their decisions. This article applies Bush, Connell, and Denney’s (2006) eight-step ethical decision-making model to the ethicality of deciding to or abstaining from conducting competence for execution evaluations. This article does not propose what decisions an individual evaluator should make regarding this work, but rather presents a systematic guide for mental health professionals (particularly those who do not support capital punishment) to consider.

Leveraging Drupal for your business:
Use Drupal to power your business -- hear case studies and learn about adapting to open-source technology.

Libraries are growing into new joint entities -- the library as a place, and the library as a resource. Library websites serve as a resource, delivering tools for learning to patrons and students in an academic setting. Drupal is an ideal tool for facilitating the specialized tasks that many library developers have to complete.

In this session, attendees will learn about:
       1. Using the built-in architecture of Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 to meet the goals of library 
           websites.
       2. The 10 best modules for library websites.
       3. 10 recommended theming techniques for common library interfaces.
       4. New expectations of library websites as gathered from user surveys and usability
           studies.
       5. Example set-ups of Drupal sites for common library settings and staff organizations.
       6. Successful case studies of major library websites run on Drupal.
       7. Tips for useful library-specific usability studies with library users and students.

Attendees will come away from this session with a firm understanding of quality library sites as tools, and what many users are growing to expect. They will also learn how to set up a Drupal website for a library, and successful ways to meet the specific resource needs of their organizations.

The archived event website can be accessed here.

Most redesigns involve exhaustive plans, dense reports, and thorough documentation of site requirements. When the website is perfected, this brand-new site is rolled out to users. This is often a lengthy process. The principals of Agile development champion interactions over processes, working software over comprehensive documentation and responding to change over following a plan. These methods encourage small, iterative changes on a rapid development and delivery cycle. This allows developers to respond to needs more quickly and decreases the cognitive load on users while allowing them to more easily adapt to change. Get tips for making a case for library websites to adopt Agile practices —small improvements through iterative changes allow users to adapt and increase user satisfaction.

This presentation addresses the usability testing and user feedback which initiated the decision to purchase a web-scale discovery service for a large academic research library, the selection process to determine a service provider, the project management employed to implement and market the service, feedback provided by users and library staff, and the future impact of web-scale discovery services on libraries and library staff.

Presentations describing the steps involved in a library website redesign are ubiquitous. Most redesigns involve exhaustive plans, dense reports, and thorough documentation of site requirements. When the website is perfected, this brand new site is rolled out to users. This is often a lengthy process.

The principals of Agile development champion interactions over processes, working software over comprehensive documentation and responding to change over following a plan. These methods encourage small, iterative changes on a rapid development and delivery cycle. This allows developers to respond to needs more quickly and decreases the cognitive load on users while allowing them to more easily adapt to change.

This presentation makes the case that library websites should adopt Agile practices. Small improvements through iterative changes allow users to adapt and increase user satisfaction.