Inspired by John Rawls and his life's work Justice as Fairness, I sought to measure how much political empathy a person has and then compare this to decision-making styles in search of any relation between the two. Political empathy is a term to refer to one's willingness to utilize governmental policy to help those who are the neediest because of the understanding that humans deserve equal treatment since no one is more human than anyone else. Because of current research I found that I can test political empathy because of empathy’s correlation with political ideology; specifically, that those who are more liberal have more empathy. I test participant’s ideology in a normal setting and then present them with the concept of Rawls’ Original Position to see if they shift more one way when presented with this idea which is supposed to make them think more empathetically.<br/>I have two hypothesis that I cover: first, that more people will shift in a more liberal direction between the two tests, and second, that those who have more political empathy make political decisions based more on emotion rather than facts and reason. I tested decision-making through a myriad of tests within a focus group so I could get multiple angles at the issue. My first hypothesis was proven incorrect and while I didn’t have enough participants in my focus groups to make a clear determination, it didn’t look like there was any correlation between political ideology and decision-making styles.

This study sought to investigate the relation between expert witness likeability and juror judgments of credibility and sentencing. Two actors playing expert witnesses were trained to present themselves as high and low in likeability in a standard testimony scenario involving capital trial sentencing. The effects of extraversion and gender in mock jurors in attending to expert testimony were also examined. The dependent variables were the perceptions of the witnesses’ credibility and agreement with testimony and the participants were 210 psychology undergraduates. Likeability of expert witnesses was found to be significantly related to judgments of trustworthiness of the experts, but not related to confidence or knowledge of the experts or to the mock juror sentencing decisions. Women participants rated high likeable experts as more credible than low likeable experts; men did not. For men jurors, agreement with testimony increased as extraversion increased. However, for women jurors, agreement with testimony decreased as extraversion increased. The results suggest that likeability can be an important element of source credibility, and that attorneys and trial consultants now have an empirical foundation for addressing likeability as part of witness preparation.

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.

Despite George Washington’s warning against political parties, the United States we know today consists of two political parties that are becoming even more polarized. Since President Trump’s first run for the Republican party candidate and presidency, these partisan tensions have been recharged with further polarization and many individuals swearing on social media they would never date a Trump supporter. According to Pew Research Center, “45% [of Democrats and those who lean left who are currently seeking relationships] say they definitely would not consider seriously dating a Trump voter” (Brown 2020). The divide between parties and the importance of political beliefs amongst partners has appeared to only increase after the actions taken at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. My research aims to quantify this phenomenon and then discover the “why?” behind it. How many people really consider their partner’s partisan affiliation and political beliefs a deal-breaker? Further, is it a deal-breaker because of the individual’s identity and political beliefs? Using intersectionality as a framework to examine identity and the confluence of identifiers and oppressors, will allow for a deeper understanding and personal account of why individuals find partisanship to be such a big criterion in a partner.