Matching Items (19)
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- All Subjects: Law
- All Subjects: Prejudices
- Creators: Schweitzer, Nicholas
Description
Psychology of justice research has demonstrated that individuals are concerned with both the process and the outcomes of a decision-making event. While the literature has demonstrated the importance of formal and informal aspects of procedural justice and the relevancy of moral values, the present study focuses on introducing a new form of justice: Substantive justice. Substantive justice focuses on how the legal system uses laws to constrain and direct human behavior, specifically focusing on the function and the structure of a law. The psychology of justice literature is missing the vital distinction between laws whose function is to create social opportunities versus threats and between laws structured concretely versus abstractly. In the present experiment, we found that participant evaluations of the fairness of the law, the outcome, and the decision-maker all varied depending on the function and structure of the law used as well as the outcome produced. Specifically, when considering adverse outcomes, individuals perceived laws whose function is to create liability (threats) as being fairer when structured as standards (abstract guidelines) rather than rules (concrete guidelines); however, the opposite is true when considering laws whose function is to create eligibility (opportunities). In juxtaposition, when receiving a favorable outcome, individuals perceived laws whose function is to create liability (threats) as being fairer when defined as rules (concrete guidelines) rather than standards (abstract guidelines).
ContributorsLovis-McMahon, David (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas J. (Thesis advisor) / Saks, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Kwan, Sau (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Life History Theory suggests that, in order to maximize reproductive fitness, individuals make trade-offs between allocating resources to mating and parenting. These trade-offs are influenced by an individual's sex, life history strategy, and environment. Here, I explored the usefulness of a Life History Theory framework for understanding endorsement of child support laws. This study experimentally manipulated sex ratio, and gathered information about participants' endorsement of child support, sexual restrictedness, and mate value. As predicted, women endorsed child support more than men, whereas men favored greater restriction of child support in the form of required paternity testing. However, in general, results do not support an effect of sex ratio, sexual restrictedness, or mate value on endorsement of child support. Results suggest sensitivity to exploitation in a male-biased sex ratio, reflected by an increase in men's endorsement of paternity testing requirements under a male-biased sex ratio prime. Women, on the other hand, report especially unfavorable beliefs toward paternity testing in a male-biased sex ratio. Although results of the current study are mixed, there remains much to be gained from applying an evolutionary perspective to understanding variability in endorsement of child support.
ContributorsWilliams, Keelah (Author) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Thesis advisor) / Saks, Michael (Committee member) / Kenrick, Douglas (Committee member) / Ellman, Ira (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Recent research has identified affirmation of transcendence and exposure to violent Bible verses as being related to greater prejudice toward value-violating out-groups (Blogowska & Saroglou, 2012; Shen et al., 2013). Effects of exposure to specific Bible verses on attitudes toward out-groups have not been measured in combination with the Post-Critical Belief Scale developed by Hutsebaut (1996). The relationships between exposure to scriptural endorsements of prejudice, affirmation vs. disaffirmation of transcendence, literal vs. symbolic processing of religious content, and prejudice toward value-violating out-groups were examined using an online survey administered to a sample of U.S. adults (N=283). Greater affirmation of transcendence scores were linked to greater prejudice toward atheists and homosexuals and more favorable ratings of Christians and highly religious people. Lower affirmation of transcendence scores were linked to less favorable ratings of Christians and highly religious people and more favorable ratings of atheists. Exposure to scriptural endorsements of prejudice did not have a significant effect on levels of prejudice in this study.
ContributorsGrove, Richard (Author) / Robles, Elías (Thesis advisor) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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 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
Description
Scientists, lawyers, and bioethicists have pondered the impact of scientifically deterministic evidence on a judge or jury when deciding the sentence of a criminal. Though the impact may be one that relieves the amount of personal guilt on the part of the criminal, this evidence may also be the very reason that a judge or jury punishes more strongly, suggesting that this type of evidence may be a double-edged sword. 118 participants were shown three films of fictional sentencing hearings. All three films introduced scientifically deterministic evidence, and participants were asked to recommend a prison sentence. Each hearing portrayed a different criminal with different neurological conditions, a different crime, and a different extent of argumentation during closing arguments about the scientifically deterministic evidence. Though the argumentation from the prosecution and the defense did not affect sentencing, the interaction of type of crime and neurological condition did.
ContributorsMeschkow, Alisha Sadie (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Thesis director) / Robert, Jason (Committee member) / Patten, K. Jakob (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
Risk assessments are key legal tools that can inform a number of legal decisions regarding parole sentencing and predict recidivism rates. Due to assessments being
historically performed by humans, they can be prone to bias and have come under various
amounts of scrutiny. The increased capability and application of machine learning
technology has lead the justice system to incorporate algorithms and codes to increase
accuracy and reliability. This study researched laypersons’ attitudes towards these algorithms
and how they would change when exposed to an algorithm that made errors in the risk
assessment process. Participants were tasked with reading two vignettes and answering a series
of questions to assess the differences in their perceptions towards machine learning and
clinician-based risk assessments. The research findings showed that individuals lent more trust
to clinicians and had more confidence in their assessments when compared to machines, but
were not significantly more punitive when it came to attributing blame and judgement for the
consequences of an incorrect risk assessment. Participants had a significantly more positive
attitude towards clinician-based risk assessments, noting their assessments as being more
reliable, informed, and trustworthy. Participants were also asked to come to a parole decision
using the assessment of either a clinician or machine learning algorithm at the end of the study
and rate their own confidence in their decision. Results found that participants were only
significantly less confident in their decision when exposed to previous instances of risk
assessments with error, but that there was no significant difference in their confidence based
solely on who conducted the assessment.
ContributorsMa, Angeline (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Powell, Derek (Committee member) / Smalarz, Laura (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Civil juries are becoming an increasingly rare means of resolving civil disputes. One reason for this is widespread mistrust in jury decision-making do to highly publicized nuclear verdicts where verdicts do not seem to match the alleged harm suffered by a plaintiff. Critics allege that jurors are biased against defendants with deep pockets. This research aims to test whether there is evidence of so-called deep-pocket bias in juror decision-making. Previous research has compared how the wealth of defendants impacts jurors’ verdicts while other studies have compared how jurors’ verdicts are impacted when the defendant is an individual versus a corporation. The first aim is to explore the impact of defendant wealth and corporate identity on jurors’ liability verdicts and damage awards. The second aim is to explore whether the theory of dyadic morality helps to explain any potential observed deep-pocket biases. The study tested the hypothesis that perceptions of a defendant’s moral agency (in other words, their responsibility and intentionality) would predict jurors’ liability verdicts while perceptions of a defendant’s moral patiency (in other words, their vulnerability and capacity for suffering) would predict jurors’ damage awards. In a study of mock juror decision-making, results concluded that when assessing the same alleged wrongdoing and harm, jurors were more confident in a liable verdict against wealthy defendants and corporate defendants compared to poor defendants and individuals as defendants. Higher perceptions of a defendant’s moral agency did explain these effects. However, there was no evidence that defendant wealth or corporate identity influenced damage awards. Ultimately, in cases where plaintiffs portray themselves as a small and vulnerable “David” taking on a large and resourceful “Goliath,” juror decision-making on liability verdicts is likely to unfairly punish “Goliath” defendants, revealing deep-pocket biases against wealthy defendants and corporations.
ContributorsRosales, Breanna Olson (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica (Thesis advisor) / Smalarz, Laura (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
Emotions are an important part of persuasion. Experimental research suggests that White and male jurors can use emotion to increase their influence, while other jurors cannot. This research builds on prior research by examining the relationship between naturally occurring emotion during mock jury deliberations and the influence that jurors hold. Participants (N = 708) in 153 mock juries watched a murder trial video and deliberated on a verdict. Participants self-reported their experienced emotions and rated their perceptions of the other jurors’ emotion and influence. After data was collected, I extracted acoustic indicators of expressed emotion from each deliberation and used a speech emotion recognition model to classify each mock juror’s emotional expression. I hypothesized that there would be an overall effect of emotional expression on influence such that as mock jurors’ emotion increased, their influence would also increase. However, I hypothesized that a juror’s race and gender would moderate the relationship between emotion and influence such that White male jurors will be seen as more influential when they are more emotional, and that female jurors and jurors of color will be seen as less influential when they are more emotional. I also hypothesized that female jurors of color will be doubly penalized for being emotional, due to their “double-minority” status. Bayesian model averaging suggested that the data was most probable under models that included perceived emotion, race, and the interaction between the two, compared to models that did not. Consistent with the hypothesis, as participants were perceived as more emotional, their influence increased. In contrast to the hypotheses, being perceived as more emotional increased influence for both White and non-White mock jurors but the effect was stronger for non-White jurors. In other words, while all jurors benefited from being perceived as more emotional, non-White jurors benefited more than White jurors. Male jurors were more influential than female jurors, and gender did not interact with emotion.. Although being perceived as more emotional predicted increased influence for all participants, this research demonstrates that there are racial and gender disparities in the level of influence that someone might hold on a jury.
ContributorsPhalen, Hannah J (Author) / Salerno, Jessica (Thesis advisor) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Committee member) / Duran, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
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 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
Differential perceptions of LGBT individuals: the intersectionality of sexual orientation and gender
Description
Current research on anti-gay attitudes has focused heavily on heterosexuals versus
non-heterosexuals, with very little research delving into the differences within these “non-heterosexual” groups. The author conducted an exploratory analysis of how the intersectional effect of gender and sexual orientation affect perceptions of target groups’ gender and sexuality, which in turn might explain different levels of prejudice toward LGBT subgroups. Based on previous studies, the author hypothesized that participants would believe that a gay male has a more fixed sexuality than a lesbian, leading in turn to higher levels of moral outrage. This study further aims to extend the literature to perceptions of bisexual and transgender individuals by testing competing hypotheses. Participants might feel less moral outrage toward these groups than other LGBT subgroups because they believe their sexuality is even less fixed than lesbians’. Alternatively, participants might feel more moral outrage toward bisexual and transgender targets (versus other LGBT groups) because of the uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty about these groups’ sexuality and/or gender. Overall, participants demonstrated an interactive effect of gender and sexuality on factors including perceived sexual orientation, perceived biological sex, perceived gender identity, perceived sexual fixedness, and moral outrage rather than gender having a main effect on perceptions of gender and sexual orientation having a main effect on perceptions of sexuality. Furthermore, perceptions of sexual fixedness mediated the effect of gender on moral outrage for heterosexual target groups, but not gay targets. Gender certainty mediated the effect of gender on moral outrage for pre-op transgender target groups, but not heterosexuals. This work is important to inform future research on the topics of the intersection of sexuality and gender, especially to extend the limited literature on perceptions of bisexual and transgender individuals.
non-heterosexuals, with very little research delving into the differences within these “non-heterosexual” groups. The author conducted an exploratory analysis of how the intersectional effect of gender and sexual orientation affect perceptions of target groups’ gender and sexuality, which in turn might explain different levels of prejudice toward LGBT subgroups. Based on previous studies, the author hypothesized that participants would believe that a gay male has a more fixed sexuality than a lesbian, leading in turn to higher levels of moral outrage. This study further aims to extend the literature to perceptions of bisexual and transgender individuals by testing competing hypotheses. Participants might feel less moral outrage toward these groups than other LGBT subgroups because they believe their sexuality is even less fixed than lesbians’. Alternatively, participants might feel more moral outrage toward bisexual and transgender targets (versus other LGBT groups) because of the uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty about these groups’ sexuality and/or gender. Overall, participants demonstrated an interactive effect of gender and sexuality on factors including perceived sexual orientation, perceived biological sex, perceived gender identity, perceived sexual fixedness, and moral outrage rather than gender having a main effect on perceptions of gender and sexual orientation having a main effect on perceptions of sexuality. Furthermore, perceptions of sexual fixedness mediated the effect of gender on moral outrage for heterosexual target groups, but not gay targets. Gender certainty mediated the effect of gender on moral outrage for pre-op transgender target groups, but not heterosexuals. This work is important to inform future research on the topics of the intersection of sexuality and gender, especially to extend the limited literature on perceptions of bisexual and transgender individuals.
ContributorsMalik, Sarah Elizabeth (Author) / Salerno, Jessica M (Thesis advisor) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Committee member) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016