Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: decision-making
- All Subjects: Scientific Evidence
- Creators: Berry, Megan Cheyenne
Description
By providing vignettes with manipulated scientific evidence, this research examined if including more or less scientific detail affected decision-making in regards to the death penalty. Participants were randomly assigned one of the two manipulations (less science and more science) after reading a short scenario introducing the mock capital trial and their role as jury members. Survey respondents were told that a jury had previously found the defendant guilty and they would now deliberate the appropriate punishment. Before being exposed to the manipulation, respondents answered questions pertaining to their prior belief in the death penalty, as well as their level of support of procedural justice and science. These questions provided a baseline to compare to their sentencing decision. Participants were then asked what sentence they would impose \u2014 life in prison or death \u2014 and how the fMRI evidence presented by an expert witness for the defense affected their decision. Both quantitative and qualitative measures were used to identify how the level of scientific detail affected their decision. Our intended predictor variable (level of scientific detail) did not affect juror decision-making. In fact, the qualitative results revealed a variety of interpretations of the scientific evidence used both in favor of death and in favor of life. When looking at what did predict juror decision-making, gender, prior belief in the death penalty, and political ideology all were significant predictors. As in previous literature, the fMRI evidence in our study had mixed results with regards to implementation of the death penalty. This held true in both of our manipulations, showing that despite the level of detail in evidence intended for mitigation, jurors with preconceived notions may still disregard the evidence, and some jurors may even view it is aggravating and thus increase the likelihood of a death sentence for a defendant with such brain abnormalities.
ContributorsBerry, Megan Cheyenne (Author) / Fradella, Hank (Thesis director) / Pardini, Dustin (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Law and science are fundamental to the operation of racism in the United States. Law provides structure to maintain and enforce social hierarchies, while science ensures that these hierarchies are given the guise of truth. Biologists and geneticists have used race in physical sciences to justify social differences, while criminologists, sociologists, and other social scientists use race, and Blackness in particular, as an explain-all for criminality, poverty, or other conditions affecting racialized peoples. Social and physical sciences profoundly impact conceptualizations and constructions of race in society, while juridical bodies give racial science the force of law—placing legal benefits and criminal punishments into play. Yet, no formal rules govern the use of empirical data in opinions of the Supreme Court. My dissertation therefore studies the Court’s use of social scientific evidence in two key cases involving race and discrimination to identify what, if any, social scientific standards the Court has developed for its own analysis of scientific evidence. In so doing, I draw on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Institutional Ethnography (IE) to develop a methodological framework for the study and use of social sciences in the law. Critical Race scholars generally argue that race is a social and legal construct and racism is endemic, and permanent, while Institutional Ethnography provides a social scientific method for rigorous study of the law by mapping and illuminating relationships of power manifested in social institutions that construct consciousness and place for marginalized groups in society. Combining methods of IE with epistemologies of CRT, I propose Critical Race Methodologies in the study of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin and Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. These two cases from recent terms of the Supreme Court involve heavy use of social sciences in briefing and at oral argument, and both cases set standards for racial inclusiveness in Texas. Throughout this dissertation, I look at how law and social sciences co-construct racial meanings and racial power, and how law and social science understand and misunderstand one another in attempting to scientifically understand the role of race in the United States.
ContributorsChin, Jeremiah Augustus (Author) / Brayboy, Bryan McK.J. (Thesis advisor) / Tsosie, Rebecca (Committee member) / Gomez, Alan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
The purpose for creating this thesis project is to discover the effects that options have on consumer behavior and satisfaction, and to determine whether or not more options are a good thing. In exploring these questions, Information Measurement Theory (IMT), a theory founded by Dr. Dean Kashiwagi which relies on understanding natural laws to help minimize decision-making and risk, was utilized to draw conclusions. IMT illustrates that any given situation can only have one unique outcome, and minimizing decision-making in turn leads to reduced stress. The more information an individual has for the given situation, the better he/she can predict the outcome. The concepts of IMT, specifically the ideal that more decision-making leads to higher stress, were utilized to illustrate that more options naturally leads to more decisions and as a result more decision-makers will feel greater stress and less satisfaction. To conduct this research we explored two different segments of consumer markets. The first branch of our research was comprised of analyzing the differences in operations and menu structures of different fast food chains, most specifically In-N-Out and McDonald's and how these differences affect customer satisfaction. The other branch of our research involved reviewing phone case ratings based on Amazon reviews for a number of different phone types with varying popularity to gauge consumer satisfaction. Our results found that while both In-N-Out and McDonald's are successful companies, In-N-Out ranked consistently higher in customer satisfaction. Furthermore, a large portion of this satisfaction can be attributed to In-N-Out's simplistic menu structure which limits the amount of options and therefore decisions that a customer must make. Similarly, our study of phone cases found that for phone models where less case options are offered, customers rated their cases higher on a scale of 1-5 stars regardless of brand or the number of reviews. Through a combination of IMT and our research we were able to conclude that less options does indeed lead to higher consumer satisfaction.
ContributorsBrandt, Lawrence (Co-author) / Spiller, Ryan (Co-author) / Kashiwagi, Dean (Thesis director) / Kashiwagi, Jacob (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Management (Contributor) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05