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Protectors who do harm are often punished more severely because their crime is perceived as a betrayal of trust. Two experiments test whether this will generalize to protectors who incur harm while serving in their protective role, and if not, whether collective guilt for the harm they suffered provides an

Protectors who do harm are often punished more severely because their crime is perceived as a betrayal of trust. Two experiments test whether this will generalize to protectors who incur harm while serving in their protective role, and if not, whether collective guilt for the harm they suffered provides an explanation. Study 1 tested competing hypotheses that a veteran (versus civilian) with PTSD would be punished either more harshly because of the trust betrayal, or more leniently because of increased guilt about the harm the veteran suffered during war. Men and women were both more lenient toward a veteran (versus civilian) but this effect was mediated by collective guilt only among men. In Study 2, guilt inductions increased leniency among participants less likely to classify the veteran as an in-group member (women, low national identifiers), but not in those who are more likely to classify the veteran as an in-group member (men, high national identifiers), who were lenient without any guilt inductions.
ContributorsJay, Alexander Charles (Author) / Salerno, Jessica M (Thesis advisor) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Committee member) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) evidence has been shown to have a strong effect on juror decision-making when presented in court. While DNA evidence has been shown to be extremely reliable, fingerprint evidence, and the way it is presented in court, has come under much scrutiny. Forensic fingerprint experts have been working

Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) evidence has been shown to have a strong effect on juror decision-making when presented in court. While DNA evidence has been shown to be extremely reliable, fingerprint evidence, and the way it is presented in court, has come under much scrutiny. Forensic fingerprint experts have been working on a uniformed way to present fingerprint evidence in court. The most promising has been the Probabilistic Based Fingerprint Evidence (PBFE) created by Forensic Science Services (FSS) (G. Langenburg, personal communication, April 16, 2011). The current study examined how the presence and strength of DNA evidence influenced jurors' interpretation of probabilistic fingerprint evidence. Mock jurors read a summary of a murder case that included fingerprint evidence and testimony from a fingerprint expert and, in some conditions, DNA evidence and testimony from a DNA expert. Results showed that when DNA evidence was found at the crime scene and matched the defendant other evidence and the overall case was rated as stronger than when no DNA was present. Fingerprint evidence did not cause a stronger rating of other evidence and the overall case. Fingerprint evidence was underrated in some cases, and jurors generally weighed all the different strengths of fingerprint testimony to the same degree.
ContributorsArthurs, Shavonne (Author) / McQuiston, Dawn (Thesis advisor) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
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Description
Recent advances in hierarchical or multilevel statistical models and causal inference using the potential outcomes framework hold tremendous promise for mock and real jury research. These advances enable researchers to explore how individual jurors can exert a bottom-up effect on the jury’s verdict and how case-level features can exert a

Recent advances in hierarchical or multilevel statistical models and causal inference using the potential outcomes framework hold tremendous promise for mock and real jury research. These advances enable researchers to explore how individual jurors can exert a bottom-up effect on the jury’s verdict and how case-level features can exert a top-down effect on a juror’s perception of the parties at trial. This dissertation explains and then applies these technical advances to a pre-existing mock jury dataset to provide worked examples in an effort to spur the adoption of these techniques. In particular, the paper introduces two new cross-level mediated effects and then describes how to conduct ecological validity tests with these mediated effects. The first cross-level mediated effect, the a1b1 mediated effect, is the juror level mediated effect for a jury level manipulation. The second cross-level mediated effect, the a2bc mediated effect, is the unique contextual effect that being in a jury has on the individual the juror. When a mock jury study includes a deliberation versus non-deliberation manipulation, the a1b1 can be compared for the two conditions, enabling a general test of ecological validity. If deliberating in a group generally influences the individual, then the two indirect effects should be significantly different. The a2bc can also be interpreted as a specific test of how much changes in jury level means of this specific mediator effect juror level decision-making.
ContributorsLovis-McMahon, David (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Saks, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / MacKinnon, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
Biases have been studied in many legal contexts, including sexual assault cases. Sexual assault cases are complex because there are many stages that biases can come into play and have lasting effects on the rest of the case proceedings. One aspect that has not been widely explored is how people

Biases have been studied in many legal contexts, including sexual assault cases. Sexual assault cases are complex because there are many stages that biases can come into play and have lasting effects on the rest of the case proceedings. One aspect that has not been widely explored is how people perceive institutions’ liability in sexual assault cases based on an obligation to create non-discriminating environments for members and employees according to laws like Title VII and Title IX. The current project focused on how and why cognitive biases affect laypeople’s judgment. Specifically, laypeople’s ability to discern the strength of evidence in civil sexual assault cases against institutions. This was addressed in a series of two studies, with samples collected from Prolific Academic (n = 90) and Arizona State University students (n = 188) for Study 1 (N = 278), and Prolific Academic in Study 2 (N = 449). Both studies used Latin-square design methods, with within and between subject elements, looking at how confirmation bias influenced decisions about whether an institution demonstrated negligence, and thus liability, in the way they responded to sexual assault allegations within their institution. Results from these studies suggest that jurors are overall accurately able to differentiate between weak and strong cases. However, consistent with previous literature, jurors may be susceptible to confirmation bias from outside information (e.g., news stories) and negatively influenced by their personal attitudes (e.g., rape myth acceptance). Given the increased attention of the Me Too movement, these results provide an initial insight into how individuals may be judging these types of cases against institutions.
ContributorsMcCowan, Kristen (Author) / Neal, Tess M.S. (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica M (Committee member) / Davis, Kelly C (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020