Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Putting A Slam On Alcohol Violators Through Dram- How The State Of Ohio Can Improve The Day-To-Day Safety Of Its Residents Through Dram Laws, Steven Iwanek

Honors Projects

In the realm of legal frameworks governing the service and consumption of alcohol, Dram Shop Liability Laws play a pivotal role in holding establishments accountable for the consequences of alcohol-related incidents. These laws, known as dram laws, vary across states, delineating the responsibilities of alcohol servers and establishments in preventing the overconsumption of alcohol and the resultant harm. This examination delves into a comprehensive background of dram laws, particularly focusing on their historical evolution, their present implications, and the imperative need for refinement.

As societal dynamics and patterns of alcohol consumption evolve, so too must the legislative mechanisms designed to …

Bargaining In The Shadow Of The Truth: How Client Assertion, Perception Of Guilt, And Predictive Inaccuracy Influence Plea Recommendations, Anna D. Vaynman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the past few decades, the largely hidden, secretive, and widely used system of plea bargaining has caught the fervent attention of scholars. The Shadow of the Trial model has been central to much of the plea-bargaining literature, despite significant critiques about its oversimplification. The model posits that defendants and their attorneys make plea decisions based largely on the estimated probability of conviction and the severity of the sentence to which the defendant could be exposed at trial.

The model, however, assumes that all actors are rational, equally risk averse, have no competing interests, and possess high predictive accuracy. It …

The Downfall Of Daniel Fitzpatrick: A Creative Short Story, Renee Horsley

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Daniel grew up with humble beginnings in Starlight, Nebraska. His loving parents provided him and his four other siblings with as much as they could. Victoria grew up wealthy in a small town in Georgia but by fifth grade, Victoria would move to Starlight due to her father’s business proposition. Soon Daniel and Victoria’s worlds collided setting the way for the most epic and yet tragic love story to ever hit Starlight Nebraska. A creative short story that intertwines the disciplines of criminal justice, intergroup dialogue, psychology, and the law.

Pre-Report Review Of Body-Worn Camera Footage: An Examination Of Stakeholder Beliefs, Laypeople’S Judgments Of Officer Credibility, And The Consequences For Memory, Kristyn A. Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Aim: This dissertation examines people’s beliefs about police officer access to body-worn camera footage, people’s judgments of officer credibility as it relates to video footage, and the consequences that review of footage has on reporting accuracy.

Rationale: With escalating police-civilian tensions in 2014, American police departments adopted body-worn camera programs. A majority of departments have policies allowing officers unrestricted access to camera footage. Because officers fear that inconsistencies between reports and videos could result in suspicion of officer deceit, they argue that officers should have access to footage before writing their reports to ensure reports match the footage. Yet, because …

The Influence Of Gender And Language Complexity On The Credibility Of Expert Witness Testimony, Darcy Egan

Undergraduate Theses

With the increased use in expert witness testimony in civil trials, the decisions that jury members have made based on those testimonies have become very controversial. Previous research indicates that when a testimony is particularly complex, mock jurors will rely on cues outside the content of the testimony in order to determine the credibility of the witness. Research shows that there are different cues that are associated with higher credibility the expert. Common cues include the gender, occupation, and level of language complexity of the expert witness. This study used these three different cues as the independent variables, with two …

Neurologists Look At Causes Of Baffling Brain Condition, Maggie Freleng

Capstones

It can be hard getting help for someone with mental illness, but almost impossible when that person doesn't think they are sick. At at least half of people with schizophrenia, for example, insist that the voices they hear are real. People who do not know they are ill often refuse therapy and medication -- and their symptoms can spiral out of control. Doctors call this lack of awareness anosognosia. Neurologists are trying to discover what causes this baffling condition--and how to treat it.

Identifying The Prevalence Of The “Dark Triad” Personality Traits In Law Students: Eradicating An Unwarranted Stereotype, Jacob I. Newton

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The personalities of lawyers are often categorized to be immoral, at least more so than those of other professionals. An abundance of literature parallels this generalization and depicts lawyers’ personalities as narcissistic, psychopathic and high in Machiavellian attitudes. Together, these three traits form the “Dark Triad” of personality. 53 law students from 3 law schools in Ontario completed a survey measuring their levels on the “Dark Triad”. Results show that the law students from the present sample do not display any “Dark Triad” trait significantly greater than the general population. It found that male law students were not significantly “darker” …

Do Our Perceptions Affect Our Decision Making In Legal Contexts?, Scott Benedict

Undergraduate Honours Theses

Previous research has established that community interaction with the mentally ill, public education on the subject, and social integration all lead to a significantly more positive prognosis for sufferers of mental illness (Trute & Loewen, 1978), especially in ensuring less-frequent interaction with the legal system. Research has also shown however, that the misinformed and uneducated are more punitive and less empathetic (Shaw & Woodworth, 2013). The large representation of the mentally ill in the prison system necessitates revisions of policies regarding the handling of mental illness in social and community immersion, public education and legal contexts. The present study was …

The Requirement To Be Fit And Proper: What Does It Mean To Australian Psychologists?, Francesca A. Bell

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The phrase fit and proper is used in the Health Practitioners Regulation National Law Act (Qld), 2009, which came into effect nationally in 2010 and governs psychologists. As with previous legislation that used the phrase, the legislator does not define fit and proper, leaving it up to each profession to determine its exact meaning and inform the courts accordingly. A review of the literature established that to date no Australian psychologist has attempted to define the construct. This means that Australian lawyers do not get any guidance from psychologists regarding how they should interpret the phrase fit and proper in …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Hegemonic Masculinity And Misconceptions Of Gender And Mental Health In Violent Criminality, Mina Dailami

Honors Papers

The present research investigates how masculine dominance in the criminal justice system is upheld through misleading media representations of violent criminality in women as predicated upon masculine traits or mental illness and masculine Identity Protection Cognition (which demonstrates the how implicit social information influences an individual to make judgments in favor of protecting their own socially dominant group). Responses to an online survey of 413 participants demonstrated that overall participants assumed men to be more likely than women to engage in violent action, and violence in men was judged to be a function of power, whereas violence in women was …

Bridging The Justice Gap: Exploring Approaches For Improving Indigent Access To Civil Counsel, Kelsey Atkinson

Pomona Senior Theses

The United States is among one of the only democratic industrialized nations in the world that does not provide guaranteed access to civil representation in cases involving basic human need. This leaves indigent litigants who are at risk of losing their homes or their children left to seek counsel through insufficient pro-bono programs or limited scope legal self-help centers. This thesis provides a history of the struggle for the right to civil counsel, known as Civil Gideon, and explores a variety of proposed solutions to bridge the justice gap for indigent litigants. Despite considerable support for Civil Gideon among scholars …

Factors Responsible For Work-Life Conflict: A Study Comparing The Teaching And Legal Professions, Waleska A. Vernon

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of work-life conflict (WLC) as experienced by mid-career members of the teaching and legal professions with a view to both determining the extent to which the universal WLC factors identified by previous research apply to specific professions and identifying any WLC factors unique to the teaching and legal fields. Participants included four business law firm lawyers and four teachers working in large urban Ontario settings, all with at least five years of experience working in their field. A phenomenological design using semi-structured interviews was employed. Eight themes were identified for …

Effects Of Gender Composition Of Target And Sender Dyads On The Tendency To Infer Lies, Byron J. Simoneaux

Doctoral Dissertations

Lying is so common in human behavior that some have labeled it a social skill. Despite the ubiquity of lies, humans have consistently been found to be poor lie detectors. Attempts have been made to improve the accuracy of human lie detection. Unfortunately, the most successful training only improves accuracy slightly above the level of chance. Because of its importance to society, considerable effort has been aimed at developing methods to help determine when people are lying. Researching how and why humans infer that another person is lying has the potential to advance the understanding of lie detection. Researchers have …

Supply Vs. Demand: Re-Entering America's Prison Population Into The Workforce, Marissa Leigh Enfield

Scripps Senior Theses

Because rejoining the workforce may prevent against ex-offender recidivism, securing gainful employment is one of the best indicators of successful societal reintegration for released prisoners. However, the stigma attached to a criminal history, combined with ex-prisoners’ lack of human capital, may threaten their ability to obtain a job. The present study examines hiring managers’ attitudes towards previously imprisoned offenders applying for positions in their workplace. Using a combination of brief, fictional applicant biographies and surveys, this mixed-groups factorial study explores how hiring managers (N= 28) consider gender, type of offense, and race when an ex-offender is assessed during the application …

Temporal Shifts In Weapon Focus: Comparing Retrograde And Anterograde Effects, William Blake Erickson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When an eyewitness suffers an impairment of memory for a criminal's face because the criminal used a weapon during the commission of the crime, this impairment is called the weapon focus effect. Literature provides two explanations for how this effect arises: some implicate the narrowing of attentional cues to the weapon during the commission of a crime because arousal of the victim increases, while others claim that the weapon is merely a novel object in most everyday contexts, and novel objects demand more attention than contextually appropriate ones. The current study employed a simulated crime paradigm taking place in a …

Occupational Nepotism Among Law Firms: A Study Of Nepotism Beyond Anecdotal Evidence, Tracy L. Stout

MSU Graduate Theses

Although nepotism is not a new subject, there are not many studies addressing the psychological issues associated with the phenomenon, particularly in the workplace. The idea of “new nepotism” has emerged with the notion that some offspring have chosen the same profession as their parents, and have not been forced into a career decision or made an opportunistic decision regardless of their ability to perform. The purpose of this study was to explore workplace nepotism using an empirical research approach. Using a career choice and self-determination theory framework, a survey was devised and sent to 673 practicing attorneys in a …