Law and Psychology Commons^™

The Colourful Truth: The Reality Of Indigenous Overrepresentation In Juvenile Detention In Australia And The United States, Rachel Thampapillai

American Indian Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Psychosocial Analysis Of An Ethnography At The Cuyahoga County Public Defenders Office, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Too often, social science majors become jaded with their field of study due to a misperception of the nature of many potential jobs which they are qualified for. Such discord is prevalent amongst undergraduates who strive for work in the criminal justice system. Hollywood misrepresentations become the archetypes of the aforementioned field, leaving out the necessity and ubiquity of accompanying desk work. Still other social science majors struggle to identify theoretical interpretations in praxis.

The Art Of Fortune-Taking, Allison Weintraub

Capstones

People suffering grief or emotional distress turn to many places for comfort, which can make them a target of psychic scam artists. Stigma about falling for scams might prevent victims from seeking help. https://medium.com/@allison.weintraub/the-art-of-fortune-taking-5cdedb6718d0

Race, Social Class, And Child Abuse: Content And Strength Of Medical Professionals’ Stereotypes, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Kimberly M. Bernstein

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Black and poor children are overrepresented at every stage of the child welfare system, from suspicion of abuse to substantiation. Focusing on stereotypes as a source of bias that leads to these disparities, the current study examines the content and strength of stereotypes relating race and social class to child abuse as viewed by medical professionals. Doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals (Study 1: N = 53; Study 2: N = 40) were recruited in local hospitals and online through snowball sampling. Study 1 identified stereotype content by asking participants to list words associated with the stereotype that …

Gains, Losses, And Judges: Framing And The Judiciary, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Losses hurt more than foregone gains-an asymmetry that psychologists call "loss aversion." Losses cause more regret than foregone gains, and people struggle harder to avoid losses than to obtain equivalent gains. Loss aversion produces a variety of anomalous behaviors: people's preferences depend upon the initial reference point (reference-dependent choice); people are overly focused on maintaining the status quo (status quo bias); people attach more value to goods they own than to identical goods that they do not (endowment effect); and people take excessive risks to avoid sure losses (risk seeking in the face of losses). These phenomena are so pervasive …

Boost: Improving Mindfulness, Thinking, And Diversity, Peter H. Huang

William & Mary Business Law Review

Many important decisions can be difficult; require focused, cognitive attention; produce delayed, noisy feedback; benefit from careful and clear thinking; and quite often trigger anxiety, stress, and other strong, negative emotions. Much empirical, experimental, and field research finds that we often make decisions leading to outcomes we judge as suboptimal. These studies have contributed to the popularity of the idea of nudging people to achieve better outcomes by changing how choices and information are framed and presented (also known as choice architecture and information architecture). Although choice architecture and information architecture can nudge people into better outcomes, choice architecture and …

Trans-Cending The Medicalization Of Gender: Improving Legal Protections For People Who Are Transgender And Incarcerated, Lindsey Ruff

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

People who are transgender and incarcerated face a unique set of human rights challenges. Courts have made progress protecting transgender people who are incarcerated by relying on the psychiatric diagnosis, Gender Dysphoria (GD), as grounds for legal protections. However, reliance on a medical model of gender has practical limitations and adverse social consequences. This model fails to protect the most vulnerable people of trans experience and contributes to stigma against the transgender community overall. The social and legal interests of people who are transgender and incarcerated would be better served if their rights were protected on alternate legal grounds.

Part …

In Consumer Protection We Trust? Re-Thinking The Legal Framework For Country Of Origin Cases, Shmuel I. Becher, Jessica C. Lai

San Diego Law Review

Markets are becoming more complicated in an ever faster changing world. New findings pertaining to human behavior and consumer markets constantly challenge traditional legal and policy assumptions. Social science offers a myriad of insights into the ways trust, identity, ideology, and preferences interact and impact one another. Against this background, the need to advance a nuanced legal framework is increasingly vital.

Consumer law policy requires an interdisciplinary and holistic approach. Recent scholarship has acknowledged this need, proposing novel ways to enrich the academic discourse and develop consumer law policy. Along these lines, a growing body of literature examines how notions …

The Need To Revisit Legal Education In An Era Of Increased Diagnoses Of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity And Autism Spectrum Disorders, Heidi E. Ramos-Zimmerman

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The ever-fluctuating rhetoric from experts, in the field of neurodevelopmental disorders, has led to outdated notions and perplexity surrounding attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This Article tries to clarify some of the confusion. Better understanding of these disorders is imperative for today’s law professor, since law schools are likely admitting more students diagnosed with ADHD and ASD. This Article discusses the need for change in legal instruction and explores the link between the two disorders. An examination of recent history illuminates some of the commonly held misunderstandings and highlights the disparity in the diagnoses of ADHD …

Lemmings Or Lions: Empirical Measure Of Juror Independence In The Face Of Belief Mirroring, John Campbell

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Cooperation And Turnover In Law Faculties: A Game-Theoretic Model And An Empirical Study

Marquette Law Review

A standard account of group cooperation would predict that group stability would bring about greater cooperation because repeat-play games would allow for sanctions and rewards. In an academic unit such as a department or a law faculty, one might thus expect that faculty stability would bring about greater cooperation. However, academic units are not like most other groups. Tenured professors face only limited sanctions for failing to cooperate, for engaging in unproductive conflict, or for shirking. This article argues counter-intuitively that within limits, some level of faculty turnover may enhance cooperation. Certainly, excessive and persistent loss of faculty is demoralizing, …

The Impact Of Defendant Gender And Attractiveness On Juror Decision-Making In A Sexual Offense Case, Georgia M. Winters

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent years, instances of educator sexual assault against students have flooded the media. In particular, female teachers who abused students have seized the public’s attention as they are often portrayed as attractive and a sexual fantasy. This portrayal can then impact the way society perceives these sexual assaults. Importantly, however, it is not known whether this perception influences the prosecution and sentencing of these cases. The current study examined the impact of gender and attractiveness of a teacher, as well as gender of the student victim, on juror decision-making in a teacher/student sexual assault case. Using a 2 (Teacher …

Bias-Motivated Homicides: Toward A New Typology, Lindsey Sank Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite significant progress towards equal protection under the law for women, LGBT individuals, and people of color in the United States, hate crime remains a pervasive problem, and rates appear to have increased in recent years. Bias-motivated homicide – arguably the most serious form of hate crime – is statistically rare but may have far-reaching consequences for marginalized communities. Data from the Uniform Crime Reports and the National Crime Victimization Survey have suggested that, on average, fewer than 10 bias-motivated homicides occur in the United States per year; however, data from open sources indicate that the rate of bias-motivated homicide …

The Plot To Overthrow Genocide: State Laws Mandating Education About The Foulest Crime Of All

Marquette Law Review

This Article shines a light on a little noticed phenomenon in American law: the promulgation of ten state statutes and one state regulation, each requiring education about genocide in elementary and/or secondary schools. The mandates, adopted from 1989 through 2018, appear to be only the beginning inasmuch as in 2017 another nineteen states publicly pledged to pass such mandates as well.

The Article describes each of the existing mandates and compares them to each other, including an analysis of the laws’ respective strong and weak points. This exposition, of interest in itself, also sets the stage for proposals to improve …

Menghancurkan Kepalsuan (Studi Tentang Tindak Pidana Pemalsuan Dan Problema Penerapannya), Eva Zulfa

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

The development of the falsification of letter or document falcification has in essence undergone tremendous progress attributed to the qualification and types of documents, the various provisions and types of documents, the various provisions of rules and regulation and the interpretation of its. The evidiantary system associated with e-document is highly developed with several of form. This development makes the interpretation of the elements in the formulation of the article that has been the various provisions of the article 263, article 264 or article 266 KUHP very developed. The calculation of the expiration of prosecution which of the become a …

Bait Questions As Source Of Misinformation In Police Interviews: Does Race Or Age Of The Suspect Increase Jurors' Memory Errors?, Matilde Ascheri

Student Theses

Bait questions—hypothetical questions about evidence, often used by detectives during interrogations—can activate the misinformation effect and alter jurors’ perceptions of the evidence of a case. Here, we were interested in investigating whether mock jurors’ implicit biases could amplify the magnitude of the misinformation effect. We accomplished this by manipulating the age and race of the suspect being interrogated. As an extension of Luke et al. (2017), we had participants read a police report describing evidence found at a crime scene, then read a transcript of a police interrogation where the detective used bait questions to introduce new evidence not presented …

Essay: Corporate Triplespeak: Responses By Investor-Owned Utilities To The Epa’S Proposed Clean Power Plan, Alan R. Palmiter

Brooklyn Law Review

During the year following the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan to regulate CO2 emissions in the power sector, the largest investor-owned electric utilities engaged in a curious triplespeak. Employing the moral language of political conservatives, the utilities focused on whether and how the EPA had transgressed its “traditional” regulatory role, thus altering the “structure” of energy federalism and potentially “degrading” orderly power supplies. In disclosure filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the utilities used the moral language of political libertarians, focusing on the “financial risks” that federal government “intervention” poses to efficient power “markets” and to the “freedom” of …

Diversity Entitlement: Does Diversity-Benefits Ideology Undermine Inclusion?, Kyneshawau Hurd, Victoria C. Plaut

Northwestern University Law Review

Ideologies are most successful (or most dangerous) when they become common-sense—when they become widely accepted, taken-for-granted truths—because these truths subsequently provide implicit guidelines and expectations about what is moral, legitimate, and necessary in our society. In Regents of University of California v. Bakke, the Court, without a majority opinion, considered and dismissed all but one of several “common-sense” rationales for affirmative action in admissions. While eschewing rationales that focused on addressing discrimination and underrepresentation, the Court found that allowing all students to obtain the educational benefits that flow from diversity was a compelling rationale—essential, even, for a quality education. …

Eyes Wide Open: What Social Science Can Tell Us About The Supreme Court's Use Of Social Science, Jonathan P. Feingold, Evelyn R. Carter

Northwestern University Law Review

The Northwestern University Law Review’s 2017 Symposium asked whether McCleskey v. Kemp closed the door on social science’s ability to meaningfully contribute to equal protection deliberations. This inquiry is understandable; McCleskey is widely understood to have rendered statistical racial disparities doctrinally irrelevant in the equal protection context. We suggest, however, that this account overstates McCleskey and its doctrinal impact. Roughly fifteen years after McCleskey, Chief Justice William Rehnquist—himself part of the McCleskey majority—invoked admissions data to support his conclusion that the University of Michigan Law School unconstitutionally discriminated against white applicants.

Chief Justice Rehnquist’s disparate treatment of statistical …

Prior Mental Health Treatment And Mental Health Court Program Outcomes, Lauren Rubenstein

Student Theses

In response to the high volume of mentally ill individuals involved in the criminal justice system, mental health courts have emerged as an alternative to incarceration for these individuals. Based on the literature, it is hypothesized that participants with a history of prior mental health treatment will have better outcomes in MHC programs, including more compliant behavior and more successful completion of the program than participants with no history of prior mental health treatment. The findings of this research can be used in order to help MHC programs better accommodate all participants regardless of their treatment history.

Rethinking The Ken Through The Lens Of Psychological Science, Jason M. Chin, William E. Crozier

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Canadian courts regularly exclude psychological expert evidence that would explain the factors that produce mistaken eyewitness identifications and false confessions (two significant sources of wrongful convictions). Courts justify these exclusions on the basis that the evidence is not beyond the ken of the trier of fact—the psychologist would simply be describing an experience shared by the judge and jury. In this article, the authors suggest this reasoning rests on two fundamental misunderstandings of psychology: unconscious neglect and dispositionism. In other words, judges mistakenly assume the trier of fact understands the unconscious situational forces that distort memories and cause innocent people …

The Concept Of “Unusual Punishments” In Anglo-American Law: The Death Penalty As Arbitrary, Discriminatory, And Cruel And Unusual, John D. Bessler

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, like the English Bill of Rights before it, safeguards against the infliction of “cruel and unusual punishments.” To better understand the meaning of that provision, this Article explores the concept of “unusual punishments” and its opposite, “usual punishments.” In particular, this Article traces the use of the “usual” and “unusual” punishments terminology in Anglo-American sources to shed new light on the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. The Article surveys historical references to “usual” and “unusual” punishments in early English and American texts, then analyzes the development of American constitutional law as …

Jury Decision Making & Graphic Evidence: The Effects Of Auditory Vs. Visual Presentation, Olivia Katherine Smith

Student Theses and Dissertations

Research shows that graphic evidence in the form of visual photographs leads to an increase in guilty verdicts, but other presentation formats, such as auditory (e.g. 911 calls), have not been thoroughly examined. With the technological advances today, it is important to study the effects of modernized evidence. The current research examines the effects of presentation format of evidence (visual or auditory) and evidence content (graphic or nongraphic) on juror opinions regarding the likelihood of defendant guilt. In the four-condition study, 222 participants read an identical trial summary and examined relevant evidence. Results showed that regardless of presentation format, graphic …

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 …

Behavioral Finance Symposium Summary Paper, Michael S. Barr, Annabel Jouard, Andrew Norwich, Josh Wright, Katy Davis

Other Publications

On September 14-15, 2017, the University of Michigan’s Center on Finance, Law, and Policy and behavioral science research and design lab ideas42 brought together influential leaders from academia, government, nonprofits and the financial sector for a two-day symposium on behavioral finance. Behavioral finance is the study of how behavioral biases and tendencies affect financial decisions, and in turn how those impact financial markets.

The Influence Of Religion On The Criminal Behavior Of Emerging Adults, Christopher Salvatore, Gabriel Rubin

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Recent generations of young adults are experiencing a new life course stage: emerging adulthood. During this ‘new’ stage of the life course, traditional social bonds and turning points may not be present, may be delayed, or may not operate in the same manner as they have for prior generations. One such bond, religion, is examined here. Focusing on the United States, emerging adulthood is investigated as a distinct stage of the life course. The criminality of emerging adults is presented, a theoretical examination of the relationship between religion and crime is provided, the role of religion in emerging adults’ lives …

Reforming By Re-Norming: How The Legal System Has The Potential To Change A Toxic Culture Of Domestic Violence, Melissa L. Breger

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

The Predictors Of Juvenile Recidivism: Testimonies Of Adult Students 18 Years And Older Exiting From Alternative Education, La Toshia Palmer

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this descriptive, qualitative study was to identify and describe the importance of the predictors of juvenile recidivism and the effectiveness of efforts to prevent/avoid juvenile recidivism as perceived by previously detained, arrested, convicted, and/or incarcerated adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education in Northern California. A second purpose was to explore the types of support provided by alternative schools and the perceived importance of the support to avoid recidivism according to adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education.

Methodology: This qualitative, descriptive research design identified …

Reasoned Verdicts: Oversold?, Kayla A. Burd, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell International Law Journal

Jurors are lay fact-finders, untrained in the complexities of law and legal rules, and yet reasoned verdicts require that their reasons conform precisely to the law. This difficulty is the impetus for additional interaction with the court, as jurors must often call on legal assistance when drafting their verdicts. This necessity undermines the independence and power of jurors and opens the door for external pressures and biases to encroach on jurors’ decisions. When judges overturn jury verdicts that they consider insufficiently reasoned, judges substitute their judgments for those of the jurors. In addition, reasoned verdicts may lead to post hoc …

Nudge-Proof: Distributive Justice And The Ethics Of Nudging, Jessica L. Roberts

Michigan Law Review

A review of Cass R. Sunstein, The Ethics of Influence: Government in the Age of Behavioral Science.