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Psychology

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Institution
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Articles 1 - 12 of 12

Full-Text Articles in Criminology

Towards A Psychological Science Of Abolition Democracy: Insights For Improving Theory And Research On Race And Public Safety, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Phillip Atiba Goff Jan 2022

Towards A Psychological Science Of Abolition Democracy: Insights For Improving Theory And Research On Race And Public Safety, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Phillip Atiba Goff

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

We call for psychologists to expand their thinking on fair and just public safety by engaging with the “Abolition Democracy” framework that Du Bois (1935) articulated as the need to dissolve slavery while simultaneously taking affirmative steps to rid its toxic consequences from the body politic. Because the legacies of slavery continue to produce disparities in public safety in the U.S, both harming Black people and the institutions that could keep them safe, psychologists must take seriously questions of history and structure in addition to immediate situations. In the present article, we consider the state of knowledge regarding psychological processes …


Enlisting In The Military: The Influential Role Of Genetic Factors, Kevin M. Beaver, J. C. Barnes, Joesph A. Schwartz, Brian B. Boutwell Jan 2015

Enlisting In The Military: The Influential Role Of Genetic Factors, Kevin M. Beaver, J. C. Barnes, Joesph A. Schwartz, Brian B. Boutwell

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Given that enlistment in the U.S. military is completely voluntary, there has been a great deal of interest in identifying the various factors that might explain why some people join the military, whereas others do not. The current study expanded on this line of literature by estimating the extent to which genetic and environmental factors explained variance in the liability for lifetime participation in the military. Analysis of twin pairs drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) revealed that 82% of the variance was the result of genetic factors, 18% of the variance was …


Understanding The Role Of Social Groups In Radicalisation, Kira Harris, Eyal Gringart, Deirdre Drake Jan 2014

Understanding The Role Of Social Groups In Radicalisation, Kira Harris, Eyal Gringart, Deirdre Drake

Australian Security and Intelligence Conference

The inability to form psychological profiles of individual members across a variety of extremist groups, as well as the recognition in extremism and terrorism research indicates that no adequate personality profile exists. This requires an analysis of other factors that influence the radicalisation process. By drawing on social identity theory, this paper offers a psycho-social explanation for how people define themselves in relation to their social group, as well as how the intra-group relationships can lead to extreme behaviour and resistance to counter efforts. These groups promote a salient social identity that becomes intrinsic to the self to the extent …


Empirical Desert, Individual Prevention, And Limiting Retributivism: A Reply, Paul H. Robinson, Joshua Samuel Barton, Matthew J. Lister Jan 2014

Empirical Desert, Individual Prevention, And Limiting Retributivism: A Reply, Paul H. Robinson, Joshua Samuel Barton, Matthew J. Lister

All Faculty Scholarship

A number of articles and empirical studies over the past decade, most by Paul Robinson and co-authors, have suggested a relationship between the extent of the criminal law's reputation for being just in its distribution of criminal liability and punishment in the eyes of the community – its "moral credibility" – and its ability to gain that community's deference and compliance through a variety of mechanisms that enhance its crime-control effectiveness. This has led to proposals to have criminal liability and punishment rules reflect lay intuitions of justice – "empirical desert" – as a means of enhancing the system's moral …


The Effect Of Mental Illness Under U.S. Criminal Law, Paul H. Robinson Jan 2014

The Effect Of Mental Illness Under U.S. Criminal Law, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper reviews the various ways in which an offender's mental illness can have an effect on liability and offense grading under American criminal law. The 52 American jurisdictions have adopted a variety of different formulations of the insanity defense. A similar diversity of views is seen in the way in which different states deal with mental illness that negates an offense culpability requirement, a bare majority of which limit a defendant's ability to introduce mental illness for this purpose. Finally, the modern successor of the common law provocation mitigation allows, in its new breadth, certain forms of mental illness …


Biased Visual Attention To Out-Group Members' Skin Tone Does Not Lead To Discriminatory Behavior, Sathiarith Chau Apr 2012

Biased Visual Attention To Out-Group Members' Skin Tone Does Not Lead To Discriminatory Behavior, Sathiarith Chau

Honors Projects

According to the racial phenotype theory, the extent to which members resemble or depart from the physical prototype of a particular race will determine how strongly the perceiver associates them with preconceived racial stereotypes. For Blacks, skin color was predicted to be a primary feature attended to and those with dark skin were more negatively stereotyped. The current study aimed to explicitly measure visual attention during judgment of faces through the use of eye-tracking. Past methodologies measuring the attention to skin tone and its relationship to stereotype judgment were not directly measured. The study used a mixed model design: Label …


Mental Disorder And Criminal Law, Stephen J. Morse Apr 2011

Mental Disorder And Criminal Law, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

Mental disorder among criminal defendants affects every stage of the criminal justice process, from investigational issues to competence to be executed. As in all other areas of mental health law, at least some people with mental disorders, are treated specially. The underlying thesis of this Article is that people with mental disorder should, as far as is practicable and consistent with justice, be treated just like everyone else. In some areas, the law is relatively sensible and just. In others, too often the opposite is true and the laws sweep too broadly. I believe, however, that special rules to deal …


Gene-Environment Interactions, Criminal Responsibility, And Sentencing, Stephen J. Morse Jan 2011

Gene-Environment Interactions, Criminal Responsibility, And Sentencing, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This chapter in, Gene-Environment Interactions in Developmental Psychopathology (K. Dodge & M. Rutter, eds. 2011), considers the relevance of GxE to criminal responsibility and sentencing. It begins with a number of preliminary assumptions that will inform the analysis. It then turns to the law’s view of the person, including the law’s implicit psychology, and the criteria for criminal responsibility. A few false starts or distractions about responsibility are disposed of briefly. With this necessary background in place, the chapter then turns specifically to the relation between GxE and criminal responsibility. It suggests that GxE causes of criminal behavior have no …


Predicting Police Discretion: A Traffic Stop Analysis, Andrew Girard May 2010

Predicting Police Discretion: A Traffic Stop Analysis, Andrew Girard

Honors Projects

Examines Donald Black's (1976) theory of pure sociology with data from traffic stops collected over eight months during seventy hours of "ride alongs" with eight different police departments in Rhode Island. Posits that the social structure of each traffic stop is predictable based on observable characteristics of the parties involved and that distance in social space increases the likelihood of a police officer issuing a citation to a driver, while social characteristics similar to that of the police officer reduces the likelihood of a driver receiving a citation. Twenty-one variables throught to impact a police officer's discretion are analyzed. As …


Lost In Translation?: An Essay On Law And Neuroscience, Stephen J. Morse Jan 2010

Lost In Translation?: An Essay On Law And Neuroscience, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

The rapid expansion in neuroscientific research fuelled by the advent of functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI] has been accompanied by popular and scholarly commentary suggesting that neuroscience may substantially alter, and perhaps will even revolutionize, both law and morality. This essay, a contribution to, Law and Neuroscience (M. Freeman, Ed. 2011), will attempt to put such claims in perspective and to consider how properly to think about the relation between law and neuroscience. The overarching thesis is that neuroscience may indeed make some contributions to legal doctrine, practice and theory, but such contributions will be few and modest for the …


Deconstructing The Psychopath: A Critical Discursive Analysis, Cary H. Federman, Dave Holmes, Jean Daniel Jacob Mar 2009

Deconstructing The Psychopath: A Critical Discursive Analysis, Cary H. Federman, Dave Holmes, Jean Daniel Jacob

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

She loved accidents: any mention of an animal run over, a man cut to pieces by a train, was bound to make her rush to the spot. The spectacle of the wounded body has always had its lurid attractions. Coverage of serial killings and graphic accounts of brutal murders by various media is part of our “spectacular” culture fascinated by violence and brutality. The television is often the site where private desire and public fantasy meet, and where the fascination regarding dangerous offenders is initiated and nurtured (Knox, 17–18; Lesser). The convening of the public around scenes of violence represents …


Assessing The Need For A Formal Training Program Concerning Shoplifter Apprehension, April Lynn Hicks Apr 1995

Assessing The Need For A Formal Training Program Concerning Shoplifter Apprehension, April Lynn Hicks

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The present study was conducted to determine if supervisors and subordinates perceived a need for a formal training program on apprehending shoplifters. The study also determined whether supervisors perceived a greater or lesser need for a formal training program than did subordinates. Twenty supervisors and 70 subordinates from four retail locations were administered a Shoplifting Awareness Survey. It was found that both supervisors and subordinates perceived a need for a formal training program. The data revealed that supervisors perceived the need for a training program to be as strong as the need perceived by subordinates. Subordinates overwhelmingly indicated that they …