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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
Researchers have found inconsistent effects (negative or positive) of social relationships on self-control capacity. The variation of findings may depend on the aspects of social relationships. In this study, rather than examining overall social relationships and self-control, characteristics in social relationships were clearly defined, including social support, social connection and social conflict, to determine their specific effects on self-control. An online survey study was conducted, and 292 college students filled out the survey. For data analysis, path analysis was utilized to examined the direct effect and indirect effect from social relationships to self-control. Results showed social connection and social conflict may indirectly associate with self-control through stress, but social support does not. It may suggest, in traditional stress buffering model, it is the social connection in social support that really reduce the stress. Concerning the direct effects, social support and social connection were significantly associated with self-control directly, but social conflict does not. This result may support the Social Baseline Theory that positive social relationships have direct regulating effects. Results are good for guidance of experimental manipulation of social relationships in study of social influences of self-control.
ContributorsGuan, Xin (Author) / Burleson, Mary (Thesis advisor) / Roberts, Nicole (Committee member) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Society places great trust in the police to uphold and protect the law. People who have a duty to protect (vs. no duty) and violate the institution they are supposed to safeguard are often judged more harshly. I test whether people will punish an on-duty police officers more severely for committing a violent crime compared to an off-duty officer or a civilian. I hypothesized that this effect might be enhanced when a perpetrator commits a violent crime against an African-American compared to a Caucasian. Furthermore, I predicted that this effect will be exacerbated after highly publicized controversial incidents of police use-of-force. In a mock jury paradigm involving a defendant who committed a violent crime, I found that the protective role of the perpetrator and race of the victim did not affect punishment judgments. Participants did, however, punish defendants less and identified with police more after a highly publicized incident (the Ferguson grand jury decision) compared to before the incident.
ContributorsSanchez, Manuel Justin (Author) / Salerno, Jessica (Thesis director) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
A between-subjects online survey was conducted to explore the extent to which female victims of kidnapping crimes are blamed for the crimes committed against them and why. Scenarios involving victims aged 8 years old and 30 years old were constructed using various routes of escape. Routes of escape included a control condition in which it was not clear whether or not the victim would have escaped given the opportunity, a condition in which the victim had a clear opportunity to escape and took it, a condition in which the victim had a clear opportunity to escape and chose not to take it, and a condition in which the victim did not have an opportunity to escape. The results of the study demonstrated that the 30-year old kidnapping victim was consistently blamed more than the 8-year old victim. These victim blame measurements were exacerbated when the participant maintains a high belief in a fair and just world. A second study was constructed to determine if the victim's actions preceding the kidnapping influence victim blame attributions, and to determine if providing additional details on the victim's mindset or intentions to escape would affect the amount of blame attributed.
ContributorsTrow, Ashley Cheyenne Lacy (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Thesis director) / Neal, Tess (Committee member) / Kirsch, Sharon (Committee member) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
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
In the legal system, the prediction of a person’s risk of committing a crime has mostly been based on expert judgment. However, newer techniques that employ machine learning (ML)—a type of artificial intelligence—are being implemented throughout the justice system. Yet, there is a lack of research on how the public perceives and uses machine learning risk assessments in legal settings. In two mock-trial vignette studies, the perception of ML-based risk assessments versus more traditional methods was assessed. Study 1 was a 2 (severity of crime: low, high) x 2 (risk assessment type: expert, machine learning) x 2 (risk outcome: low, high) between-subjects design. Participants expressed ethical concerns and discouraged the use of machine learning risk assessments in sentencing decisions, but punishment recommendations were not affected. Study 2 was a within-subjects design where participants were randomly assigned read through one of three crime scenarios (violent, white-collar, sex offense) and one of three risk assessment techniques (expert, checklist, machine learning). Consistent with Study 1, participants had ethical concerns and disagreed with the use of machine learning risk assessments in bail decisions, yet their own decisions and recommendations did not reflect these concerns. Overall, laypeople express skepticism toward these new methods, but do not appear to differentially rely on ML-based versus traditional risk assessments in their own judgments.
ContributorsFine, Anna (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Smalarz, Laura (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
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