Matching Items (9)
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- All Subjects: Social Psychology
- All Subjects: Bias
- Creators: Salerno, Jessica
- Resource Type: Text
Description
While acceptance towards same-sex marriage is gradually increasing, same-sex marriage is banned in many states within the United States. Laws that prohibit same-sex couples from marrying have been shown to increase feelings of depression, exclusion, and stigma for same-sex attracted individuals. The intention of this study was to explore the effect both pro- and anti-same-sex marriage advertisements have on heterosexual individuals' implicit attitudes towards same-sex couples. It was predicted that exposure to anti-same-sex advertisements would lead to viewing same-sex couples as more unpleasant and heterosexual couples as being more pleasant. However, heterosexual participants who viewed anti-same-sex marriage ads were more likely to rate heterosexual couples as being unpleasant and same-sex couples as pleasant. It is theorized that viewing anti-same-sex marriage advertisements led heterosexual individuals to report heterosexual stimuli as being more unpleasant compared to same-sex stimuli as a form of defensive processing.
ContributorsWalsh, Theodora Michelle (Author) / Newman, Matt (Thesis advisor) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This study investigates the presence of a dual identity defendant, and how sharing an in-group can create a judgment bias. A sample of 256 participants was used to test whether there was a relationship between judgment punitiveness, perceptions of shared identity, hypocrisy and the social identities (religion and sexual orientation) of the participants and a defendant charges with a sexual offence. Results suggest that Christian participants selected more punitive outcomes for the defendant compared to non-Christian participants. Further, participants were more punitive when the defendant was gay compared to when the defendant was heterosexual. Also, when the defendant was straight there was a stronger feeling of similarity between the participants and defendant compared to when the defendant was gay, and non-Christian participants had a stronger feeling of closeness to the defendant compared to Christian participants. There was a significant interaction found, suggesting that when the defendant was Christian and gay he was seen as more hypocritical compared to when he was Christian and straight; there was no interaction when the defendant was not Christian. These findings should aid in future research and a better understanding of how dual identity defendants are perceived in the courtroom.
ContributorsAltholz, Rachel Leah (Author) / Salerno, Jessica (Thesis advisor) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Schweitzer, Nick (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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
Description
Cultivation theory states that consuming television cultivates a social reality in the real world which aligns with the reality present in television. When the television show CSI was released, researchers studied a form of cultivation stemming from the show titled the "CSI Effect." One of the components of the CSI Effect is the tendency of those who watch CSI to be more likely to overestimate the presence of forensic evidence present in a trial and place more trust in such evidence. In recent years, several true crime documentaries that examined controversial cases have been released. In a similar vein of research conducted on CSI, the current study examines true crime documentaries and their possible impacts on viewers’ judgments and beliefs about the criminal justice system. In the current study, participants were provided with a mock case and asked about their perceptions of the case along with their viewership habits. While overall true crime documentary viewership did not influence judgments of evidence manipulation or perceptions of police, findings point to viewership of the targeted documentaries being associated with feelings of mistrust towards the criminal justice system overall, while the lesser-viewed documentaries correlated with judgments of strength and responsibility of the defendant in the case. One possible explanation is that individual characteristics may serve as the driving factor in how individuals choose what to watch when the popularity of the show is not as well-known.
ContributorsDoughty, Kathryn A (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas J. (Thesis advisor) / Neal, Tess (Committee member) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
People often rely on experts' opinions and knowledge to inform their own decisions. This can be problematic, as expertise does not necessarily protect one from bias, and increased experience does not always increase an experts' accuracy (Cassidy & Buede, 2009; Goldberg, 1968; Molins et al., 2008). The nature of task characteristics of expert domains is associated with experts' performance (Shanteau 1992). The purpose of this thesis is to examine how people perceive experts in different disciplines, and to explore the factors that affect perceptions of expert objectivity. Perceptions of objectivity in 26 expert domains were examined. As hypothesized, higher ratings of clear and immediate feedback available to experts were associated with higher ratings of objectivity. However, other indicators of higher domain validity were not recognized by laypeople, such as higher levels of training and education. Contrary to our hypotheses, higher levels of familiarity with experts in a given domain and more experiences of disagreement with experts in a given domain were not associated with perceptions of objectivity. These results suggest that laypeople can correctly identify some indicators of the validity of different expert domains, but they cannot identify others. These perceptions affect how objectivity is perceived.
ContributorsVelez, Rebecca Ellen (Author) / Neal, Tess (Thesis director) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two positive discrete emotions, awe and nurturant love, on implicit prejudices. After completing an emotion induction task, participants completed Implicit Association Test blocks where they paired photos of Arab and White individuals with "good" and "bad" evaluations. We hypothesized that nurturant love would increase the strength of negative evaluations of Arab individuals and positive evaluations of White individuals, whereas awe would decrease the strength of these negative evaluations when compared to a neutral condition. However, we found that both awe and nurturant love increased negative implicit prejudices toward Arab individuals when compared to the neutral condition.
ContributorsCarrasco, Mia Annette (Author) / Shiota, Michelle (Thesis director) / O'Neil, Makenzie (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
There is conflicting evidence regarding whether a biasing effect of neuroscientific evidence exists. Early research warned of such bias, but more recent papers dispute such claims, with some suggesting a bias only occurs in situations of relative judgment, but not in situations of absolute judgment. The current studies examined the neuroimage bias within both criminal and civil court case contexts, specifically exploring if a bias is dependent on the context in which the neuroimage evidence is presented (i.e. a single expert vs. opposing experts). In the first experiment 408 participants read a criminal court case summary in which either one expert witness testified (absolute judgment) or two experts testified (relative judgment). The experts presented neurological evidence in the form of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data and the evidence type varied between a brain image and a graph. A neuroimage bias was found, in that jurors who were exposed to two experts were more punitive when the prosecution presented the image and less punitive when the defense did. In the second experiment 240 participants read a summary of a civil court case in which either a single expert witness testified or two experts testified. The experts presented fMRI data to support or refute a claim of chronic pain and the evidence type again varied between image and graph. The expected neuroimage bias was not found, in that jurors were more likely to find in favor of the plaintiff when either side proffered the image, but more likely to find for the defense when only graphs were offered by the experts. These findings suggest that the introduction of neuroimages as evidence may affect jurors punitiveness in criminal cases, as well as liability decisions in civil cases and overall serves to illustrate that the influence of neuroscientific information on legal decision makers is more complex than originally thought.
ContributorsHafdahl, Riquel J (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Neal, Tess (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
A substantial amount of research has been dedicated to understanding how and why innocent people confess to crimes that they did not commit. Unfortunately, false confessions occur even with the best possible interrogation practices. This study aimed to examine how different types of false confession (voluntary, compliance, and internalization) and the use of jury instructions specific to confessions influences jurors’ verdicts. A sample of 414 participants read a criminal trial case summary that presented one of four reasons why the defendant falsely confessed followed by either the standard jury instruction for confessions or a clarified version. Afterwards, participants completed several items assessing the perceived guilt of the defendant, their attitudes on confessions in general, and their opinions on jury instructions. Although the three confession reasons did not differ among one another, jurors who were given no explanation for the false confession tended to more harshly judge the defendant. Further, the clarified jury instructions did not influence the participants’ judgments. Future research should focus on how expert witness testimonies affect verdicts regarding each type of false confession reason and whether the media may influence a juror’s knowledge of factors that could provoke false confessions.
ContributorsPollack, Andrew Christian (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Neal, Tess (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Individuals are often susceptible to bias in their given fields; however, they may not acknowledge nor be aware of this phenomenon. Moreover, people typically can recognize bias in others yet fail to realize that they themselves are susceptible to their own bias. This is referred to as the bias blind spot, an unconscious meta-cognitive bias. Unconscious bias can lead to impaired decisions and can cause problems in the field, especially if professionals are defensive about bias mitigation procedures if they see them as unnecessary and threatening. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and examine the perceptions that professional forensic psychologists have about bias in themselves and bias in their colleagues. Eighty-four professional forensic psychologists were surveyed and asked about their perception of bias in themselves, their colleagues, an average adult, and experts in another domain: forensic science. For this study, these forensic psychologists were asked to predict the bias that they themselves might have in their judgment, that forensic scientists might have in their judgment, and that the average adult would have. As hypothesized, and consistent with the bias blind spot, professional forensic psychologists rated their peers in the same field as having a higher amount of bias in their decisions than they themselves. Moreover, they also rated other professionals in similar fields (forensic science) as having a higher bias rate than themselves. In addition, participants rated bias mitigating procedures as being a higher threat to their field than a different domain (i.e., forensic science) – consistent with hypotheses. These results suggest that professional forensic psychologists are susceptible to the bias blind spot and its consequences.
Keywords: implicit bias, bias blind spot, perceptions, judgment, mitigating procedures
Keywords: implicit bias, bias blind spot, perceptions, judgment, mitigating procedures
ContributorsVelazquez, Annelisse Danielle (Author) / Neal, Tess (Thesis director) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05