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Appraisal Theory: Old and New Questions

I describe my current thinking on two old questions—the causal role of appraisals and the relationship of appraisal theories to basic emotions theories and constructivist theories, and three (sort of) new questions—the completeness of appraisals, the role of language, and the development of automaticity in emotional responses

Legal Reasoning

For more than a century, lawyers have written about legal reasoning, and the flow of books and articles describing, analyzing, and reformulating the topic continues unabated. The volume and persistence of this unrelenting discussion (Simon, 1998, p. 4) suggests that there is no solid consensus about what legal reasoning is. Legal scholars have a tenacious intuition - or at least a strong hope - that legal reasoning is distinctive, that it is not the same as logic, or scientific reasoning, or ordinary decision making, and there have been dozens of attempts to describe what it is that sets it apart from these other forms of thinking. These attempts generate criticism, the critics devise new formulations that generate further criticism, and the process continues. In this chapter, I describe the primary forms of legal reasoning, the most important schools of thought about legal reasoning, and some of the major differences between legal reasoning and scientific reasoning

Levels of Thought and Levels of Emotion

I am not talking about unconscious emotions. If we have emotions that never ripple the surface of consciousness, they are beyond the scope of this discussion. I am talking about times when we are aware of emotional feelings, whether or not we can give these feelings a name. Even for conscious emotional states, I think it is impossible to specify a set of minimal cognitive prerequisites. In some ways it is analogous to the attempt to specify the defining features of mental illness. Some people are delusional but not unhappy, some experience debilitating panic attacks even though they know there is nothing to be afraid of, some are racked with physical pain that has no identifiable physical cause. The history of attempts to define insanity in a way that bears some relation to reality is testimony to the futility of seeking necessary and sufficient causes

Unpleasant Facts: The Supreme Court\u27s Response to Empirical Research on Capital Punishment

Slowly at first, and then with accelerating frequency, the courts have begun to examine, consider, and sometimes even require empirical data. From 1960 to 1981, for example, use of the terms statistics and statistical in Federal District and Circuit Court opinions increased by almost 15 times.1 Of course, citation rates indicate only that a topic is considered worthy of mention, not that it is taken seriously, or even understood. Nonetheless, in a number of areas, such as jury composition and employment discrimination, the courts have come to rely on empirical data as a matter of course. In the last 25 years, empirical research has been central to most major challenges to the constitutionality of capital punishment. The research involved has covered an enormous range of methods, from surveys to simulations, from econometric analyses to laboratory experiments, and the presentation of the research to the courts has generally been both comprehensive and sophisticated. There is probably no other area of criminal law in which the Supreme Court has been faced with such well-organized and wide-ranging empirical demonstrations. It is quite likely that comparable empirical data about some other issue would be persuasive to the Court; when the issue is the death penalty, however, the Court is not persuaded. In case after case, the majority of the Justices have been faced with empirical research that supports an outcome they do not want. Three major empirical questions have been brought before the Court in relation to capital punishment. The first is the issue of deterrence: Is the death penalty more effective than life imprisonment as a deterrent to murder? The second is the issue of discrimination: Are decisions about which criminals should be executed and which should be allowed to live based in part on the race of the person accused or on the race of the victim? The third is the issue of the fairness of capital juries: Does the common practice of removing strong opponents of capital punishment from the jury create juries that are biased toward a guilty verdict? The Court has dealt with the data on each of these issues somewhat differently-sometimes by calling them inconclusive, sometimes by calling them irrelevant, and sometimes by evading them. I shall examine the Court\u27s use of the data presented on each of these three questions, the first two briefly, and the third at greater length

Visual Assessment of Rivers and Marshes: An Examination of the Relationship of Visual Units, Perceptual Variables and Preference

The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship of two approaches to visual assessment of landscape--the qualitative descriptive inventory and the theoretically-based empirical perceptual preference approach. Three levels of landscape visual units based on bio-physical similarities (landscape units, setting units, and waterscape units) were identified in a marsh (CUtler Reservoir, Cache County , Utah), and its tributary streams. Color slide photographs were taken from five of the visual units. These slides were rated on a 5- point scale by panels of judges for the expression of four perceptual variables--coherence, complexity, mystery, and legibility. The same slides were rated on a 5-point scale by 98 respondents according to their preference for each slide. The relationship of the visual units, perceptual variables, and preference was evaluated by analytical and statistical procedures. Results showed significant differences in the expression of the four perceptual variables between rivers and marshes and between setting units~ Both rivers and marshes were considered coherent when there were similarities in vegetation within the respective types; however, the strong horizontal organization of the marsh scenes necessary for coherence contrasted with the edge definition and orderliness considered necessary in rivers. Mystery was also related to similar factors in rivers and marshes (such as obscuring vegetation, particularly in the marsh) but the presence of riverbanks and bends in the river corridor had a distinct effect on mystery ratings in the river scenes . Complexity in both rivers and marshes was primarily dependent on diversity of vegetation and visual depth , but the number of different visual elements in river scenes also influenced complexity. Legibility was related to straight, enclosed and simple corridors in river images and to simple spaces with regular vegetation in marsh images. Fine textures and clear spatial definition enhanced legibility. Preference ratings were significantly different between rivers and marshes, but not between river setting units or waterscape units. River scenes received higher preference ratings than marsh scenes. Mystery , complexity, and visual depth were especially important to preference. Demographic variables of age, sex, academic major, and home state did not significantly affect preference. Statistical analysis indicated each perceptual variable was an independent predictor, and that compared to visual units, perceptual variables were more strongly related to preference

Legal Reasoning

For more than a century, lawyers have written about legal reasoning, and the flow of books and articles describing, analyzing, and reformulating the topic continues unabated. The volume and persistence of this unrelenting discussion (Simon, 1998, p. 4) suggests that there is no solid consensus about what legal reasoning is. Legal scholars have a tenacious intuition - or at least a strong hope - that legal reasoning is distinctive, that it is not the same as logic, or scientific reasoning, or ordinary decision making, and there have been dozens of attempts to describe what it is that sets it apart from these other forms of thinking. These attempts generate criticism, the critics devise new formulations that generate further criticism, and the process continues. In this chapter, I describe the primary forms of legal reasoning, the most important schools of thought about legal reasoning, and some of the major differences between legal reasoning and scientific reasoning

Are Twelve Heads Better Than One?

The jury\u27s competence, unlike that of the judge, rests partly on its ability to reflect the perspectives, experiences, and values of the ordinary people in the community - not just the most common or typical community perspective, but the whole range of viewpoints

Some Steps Between Attitudes and Verdicts

Most research that has attempted to predict verdict preferences on the basis of stable juror characteristics, such as attitudes and personality traits, has found that individual differences among jurors are not very useful predictors, accounting for only a small proportion of the variance in verdict choices. Some commentators have therefore concluded that verdicts are overwhelmingly accounted for by the weight of the evidence, and that differences among jurors have negligible effects. But there is a paradox here: In most cases the weight of the evidence is insufficient to produce firstballot unanimity in the jury (Hans & Vidmar, 1986; Hastie, Penrod, & Pennington, 1983; Kalven & Zeisel, 1966). Different jurors draw different conclusions about the right verdict on the basis of exactly the same evidence. That these differences are consequential is indicated by the frequently replicated fmding that frrst ballot splits are the best-known predictor of the fmal jury verdict. In most laboratory studies of jury decisions, there are some juries, as well as jurors, that reach nonmodal verdicts. The inescapable conclusion is that individual differences among jurors make a difference

Wandering into Psychology and Law

Some people have a passion for a single topic that motivates and engages them for life. I’m not one of them. I can get interested in almost anything, and my career looks more like a random walk through a candy store than a single-minded pursuit of a goal. I am both a theorist and researcher in the field of emotion and a contributor to the application of psychology to legal issues. In this piece I will focus on my work in psychology and law. A review of my research on emotion can be found in Ellsworth and Scherer (2003)