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- All Subjects: Legal Socialization
- Creators: Pardini, Dustin
- Creators: Berry, Megan Cheyenne
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
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
Legal socialization is the process through which individuals develop their attitudes and relationships with the law. Although different types of socialization have been identified, four primary assumptions drive the perspective. These include ubiquity (process occurs in multiple contexts), continuity (process occurs across the lifetime), foundationality (law is an important regulatory institution), and reciprocity (law and citizens are influencing each other). The procedural justice model of legal socialization proposes that direct and vicarious police interactions judged to be procedurally unjust lead to lower levels of police legitimacy, higher levels of legal cynicism, and ultimately, lower compliance with the law. Recent scholarship has extended this model to non-legal authorities, finding that procedurally just interactions with parents and teachers improve child outcomes. Given its novelty, models assessing parental effects on legal attitudes have yet to consider how problematic child behaviors, including delinquency, contribute to the legal socialization process. Using 8 waves of data from a community sample of Swiss children (N = 1360), the primary goal of this study is to identify the potential direct, indirect, and reciprocal effects of child externalizing problem behaviors (as measured by aggression and hyperactive/impulsive/inattention) and parenting behaviors (as measured as prosocial and aversive) on legal cynicism. In addition, this study seeks to identify reciprocity within concepts from the procedural justice model, namely between legal cynicism and delinquency. Multivariate Latent Curve models with Structured Residuals (LCM-SR) were used to assess these relationships while also distinguishing “between-person” and “within-person” changes in these constructs over time. Results demonstrated that the relationship between child behaviors and parenting behaviors was not reciprocal, but aversive parenting did have a direct relationship with legal cynicism and delinquency over time. An unconditional LCM-SR model demonstrated that legal cynicism and delinquency were related both between-person and within-person over time. However, the reciprocal effects were inconclusive. While this study did not identify conclusive evidence of reciprocity, the results do provide more support for the ubiquity assumption, i.e., legal socialization occurs in nonlegal contexts. Parenting behaviors during childhood do influence legal cynicism and delinquency from adolescence to early adulthood.
ContributorsGifford, Faith Elise (Author) / Reisig, Michael D (Thesis advisor) / Pardini, Dustin (Thesis advisor) / Trinkner, Rick (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021