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Full-Text Articles in Law

Capital And Punishment: Resource Scarcity Increases Endorsement Of The Death Penalty, Keelah E. G. Williams, Ashley M. Votruba, Steven L. Neuberg, Michael J. Saks Jan 2019

Capital And Punishment: Resource Scarcity Increases Endorsement Of The Death Penalty, Keelah E. G. Williams, Ashley M. Votruba, Steven L. Neuberg, Michael J. Saks

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Faced with punishing severe offenders, why do some prefer imprisonment whereas others impose death? Previous research exploring death penalty attitudes has primarily focused on individual and cultural factors. Adopting a functional perspective, we propose that environmental features may also shape our punishment strategies. Individuals are attuned to the availability of resources within their environments. Due to heightened concerns with the costliness of repeated offending, we hypothesize that individuals tend toward elimination-focused punishments during times of perceived scarcity. Using global and United States data sets (studies 1 and 2), we find that indicators of resource scarcity predict the presence of capital …


Four Decades Of The Journal Law And Human Behavior: A Content Analysis, Lindsey E. Wylie, Katherine P. Hazen, Lori A. Hoetger, Joshua A. Haby, Eve M. Brank May 2018

Four Decades Of The Journal Law And Human Behavior: A Content Analysis, Lindsey E. Wylie, Katherine P. Hazen, Lori A. Hoetger, Joshua A. Haby, Eve M. Brank

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Although still relatively young, the journal Law and Human Behavior (LHB) has amassed a publication history of more than 1300 full-length articles over four decades. Yet, no systematic analysis of the journal has been done until now. The current research coded all full-length articles to examine trends over time, predictors of the number of Google Scholar citations, and predictors of whether an article was cited by a court case. The predictors of interest included article organization, research topics, areas of law, areas of psychology, first-author gender, first-author country of institutional affiliation, and samples employed. Results revealed a vast …


Measuring Older Adult Confidence In The Courts And Law Enforcement, Joseph A. Hamm, Lindsey E. Wylie, Eve M. Brank Jan 2016

Measuring Older Adult Confidence In The Courts And Law Enforcement, Joseph A. Hamm, Lindsey E. Wylie, Eve M. Brank

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Older adults are an increasingly relevant subpopulation for criminal justice policy but, as yet, are largely neglected in the relevant research. The current research addresses this by reporting on a psychometric evaluation of a measure of older adults’ Confidence in Legal Institutions (CLI). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) provided support for the unidimensionality and reliability of the measures. In addition, participants’ CLI was related to cynicism, trust in government, dispositional trust, age, and education, but not income or gender. The results provide support for the measures of confidence in the courts and law enforcement, so we present the scale as a …


Disputed Paraphilia Diagnoses And Legal Decision Making: A Case Law Survey Of Paraphilia Nos, Nonconsent, Christopher M. King, Lindsey E. Wylie, Eve M. Brank, Kirk Heilbrun Jan 2014

Disputed Paraphilia Diagnoses And Legal Decision Making: A Case Law Survey Of Paraphilia Nos, Nonconsent, Christopher M. King, Lindsey E. Wylie, Eve M. Brank, Kirk Heilbrun

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Paraphilia diagnoses applied in forensic settings are an ongoing subject of debate among psycholegal professionals and scholars. Disagreements pertain to both means-related issues having to do with issues of diagnostic reliability and validity, and ends-related issues regarding the consequences inherent to the legal contexts in which the diagnoses arise. To provide a fresh outlook on some of the issues, the present study entailed a systematic survey of U.S. case law to investigate the history, extent, and nature of forensic uses of a controversial paraphilia diagnosis, paraphilia not otherwise specified, nonconsent. Descriptive analyses revealed that use of the diagnosis, which occurred …


The Historical, Jurisprudential, And Empirical Wisdom Of Parental Responsibility Laws, Eve M. Brank, Leroy Scott Mar 2012

The Historical, Jurisprudential, And Empirical Wisdom Of Parental Responsibility Laws, Eve M. Brank, Leroy Scott

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The parent-child relationship is woven deep within historical and contemporary culture, but strong retributive ideals have led to blaming parents because of their presumed vicarious role in juvenile crime. The current article will discuss the history, forms, legal challenges, and empirical research related to parental involvement laws in the United States. The parent-child relationship provides the historical framework behind the separate juvenile justice parens patriae system; however, with the juvenile justice system not as successful as originally imagined, blame has shifted to the parents. We examine the potential constitutional implications of enacting and enforcing parental involvement statutes and ordinances and …


Discussion On The Paper By Neumann, Evett And Skerrett, Michael J. Saks, Ashley M. Votruba Jan 2012

Discussion On The Paper By Neumann, Evett And Skerrett, Michael J. Saks, Ashley M. Votruba

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Neumann, Evett, and Skerrett have made a major contribution to the art and science of fingerprint identification. This is an important—perhaps historic—step forward in the intellectual history of fingerprint identification and perhaps other fields of pattern matching forensic science. Their work deals ingeniously with the elusive problem of placing forensic identification on an empirically sound, quantitative foundation.


Holding Parents Responsible: Is Vicarious Responsibility The Public’S Answer To Juvenile Crime?, Eve M. Brank, Edie Greene, Katherine Hochevar Jan 2011

Holding Parents Responsible: Is Vicarious Responsibility The Public’S Answer To Juvenile Crime?, Eve M. Brank, Edie Greene, Katherine Hochevar

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Parental responsibility laws hold parents accountable for the delinquent behaviors of their children even when parents’ actions are not the direct cause of an offense. Despite the prevalence of these laws, we know little about their perceived fairness. Is it reasonable to make parents vicariously responsible for outcomes they could not have foreseen and, if so, under what circumstances? Our series of three studies addressed those questions by systematically examining the impact of various situational and dispositional factors on public opinions regarding parental responsibility. Respondents attributed most of the responsibility for a crime to the child, and attributions of responsibility …


Likelihood Of Using Drug Courts: Predictions Using Procedural Justice And The Theory Of Planned Behavior, Evelyn M. Maeder, Richard L. Weiner Jan 2008

Likelihood Of Using Drug Courts: Predictions Using Procedural Justice And The Theory Of Planned Behavior, Evelyn M. Maeder, Richard L. Weiner

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The current research compares two theoretical models borrowed from social psychology (theory of planned behavior and procedural justice) to predict intentions to make use of a drug court. Medicaid-eligible substance users answered a number of questions regarding their intentions to use a drug court in the future, including items from planned behavior and procedural justice scales. When procedural justice was considered alone, only trustworthiness predicted intention to use drug courts. When planned behavior was considered alone, only deliberative attitudes predicted the intention. After combining the two models, deliberative attitudes from the theory of planned behavior were the only significant predictor …