Preschoolers Think Strangers Will Share The Same Knowledge As Other Group Members, But Will Not Behave Like Them

Children learn much of what they know from others’ testimony. But, they are selective: children as young as 3 consider cues to credibility like past accuracy, benevolence, and group membership to decide whom to trust. Research on credulity has centered on how children’s judgments about an individual influences their trust for that same person later. The current study explores whether children generalize epistemic behavior (i.e., knowledgeability) and social behavior (i.e., benevolence) to members who are part of the same group but whom children have not “met”. Four- and 5-year-olds learned that people belonging to one group always either provide accurate information or are nice, and the other group always demonstrates the opposite behavior. Half the children heard the group being labeled and the other half did not. Next, children were introduced to two strangers; one wore a red shirt and the other a blue shirt. These strangers offered the same behaviors as their group earlier demonstrated. Children’s generalizations were conditional, only generalizing the epistemic trait when the stranger’s group was explicitly labeled; they never generalized the social trait to strangers. These data suggest that children use group membership to make inferences about strangers’ epistemic and social characteristics in different ways

Plea Decision-Making By Attorneys And Judges

Objectives: Approximately 95 % of convictions in the United States are the result of guilty pleas. Surprisingly little is known about the factors which judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys consider in these decisions. To examine the legal and extralegal factors that legal actors consider in plea decision-making, we replicated and improved upon a 40-year-old study by asking legal actor participants to review a variety of case factors, and then make plea decisions and estimate sentences for pleas and trials (upon conviction).Methods: Over 1,500 defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges completed an online survey involving a hypothetical legal case in which the presence of three types of evidence and length of defendant criminal history were experimentally manipulated. Results The manipulated evidence impacted plea decisions and discounts, whereas criminal history only affected plea discounts (i.e., the difference between plea and trial sentences). Defense attorneys considered the largest number of factors (evidentiary and non-evidentiary), and although legal actor role influenced the decision to plead, it did not affect the discount.Conclusions: In replicating a landmark study, via technological advances not available in the 1970s, we were able to increase our sample size nearly six-fold, obtain a sample representing all 50 states, and include judges. However, our sample was non-representative and the hypothetical scenario may or may not generalize to actual situations. Nonetheless, valuable information was gained about the factors considered and weighed by legal actors

Analysis Of Variability In Ground Reaction Forces And Electromyography For Runners Of Different Ability

Measures of movement variability have been linked to task performance, adaptability, and injury risk. Further understanding variability in running could help explain training adaptations and injury risks of the sport. This study investigated the variability of vertical, antero-posterior, and medio-lateral ground reaction forces and muscle activity of the medial gastrocnemius (Gn), tibialis anterior (TA), rectus femoris (RF), and biceps femoris (BF) between experienced runners (EXP), recreational runners (REC), and non-runners (NON) at different speeds. It was hypothesized that running experience would affect the amount of variability in all ground reaction force (GRF) components and muscle activation at different speeds. This effect between group and speed did not reach significance for any variables. All groups had less variability as speed increased for all GRF components. This was also true for pre-contact activation of the Gn. Aside from the BF, we found that EXP and REC runners did not have different variability for GRF or electromyography (EMG) measures. Unexpectedly, the pre-contact variability of the RF increased with speed. This highlights the complex nature of EMG variability during running. Though we found consistent variability trends for ground reaction forces, the interactions between EMG variability with speed and group appear to be more complex

Preventing Wrongful Convictions: An Analysis Of State Investigation Reforms

As more innocents are exonerated and researchers learn more about the causes of wrongful convictions, criminal justice practices have been altered to reduce the number of erroneous convictions, although reforms have varied widely in scope and substance throughout the nation. In this article, we provide an analysis of state-level investigative reforms important to the production of wrongful convictions as of mid- 2016. Specifically, we collect and describe reform efforts in three investigatory areas: eyewitness identification, forensics, and interrogations. We then discuss wrongful conviction reforms and the innocence movement more generally, focusing on the importance of continued research into wrongful convictions as a critical policy issue in criminal justice

Advancing Wrongful Conviction Scholarship: Toward New Conceptual Frameworks

As wrongful conviction scholarship grows, some scholars have suggested that existing research on miscarriages of justice lacks theoretical grounding and methodological sophistication, arguing that the use of social science theory may help to better understand wrongful convictions. In this article, we suggest that it may be useful to draw upon conceptual frameworks found in traditional criminal justice studies, discuss what such approaches might suggest about miscarriages of justice, and begin to explore the questions or topics they may encourage interested researchers to pursue. Furthermore, through this broad theoretical lens, we can see that criminal justice theory is present, at least implicitly, in some existing innocence literature, and that making such theoretical connections more explicit may help to move the study of wrongful conviction into the mainstream of criminal justice research

Framing DNA: Social Movement Theory And The Foundations Of The Innocence Movement

The “innocence movement” has often been mentioned, but rarely explored in depth. In particular, scholars have yet to study the beginning of the movement thoroughly. This article explores the early history of the innocence movement, referred to as the “foundations” of the movement, suggesting that the common focus solely on DNA as the source of the movement is an overly narrow historical focus. Based on archival research and interviews with key movement participants, this article draws on social movement theory to better understand the roots of the innocence movement, including its organizational foundation, early leadership, and the identification of the “problem” of wrongful conviction as a cause worthy of collective action. These three developments re-framed DNA as a tool to seek justice through post-conviction exonerations, thus creating the foundation on which the innocence movement was built

An Explicit Test Of Plea Bargaining In The “Shadow Of The Trial”

Bargaining in the “shadow of the trial,” which hinges on the expectations of trial outcomes, is the primary theory used by noncriminologists to explain variation in the plea discount given to defendants who plead guilty. This study develops a formal mathematical representation of the theory and then presents an empirical test of the theory using an innovative online survey with responses to a hypothetical case from 1,585 prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges. The key outcomes are the probability that the defendant will be convicted at trial, the sentence for the defendant if convicted, and the best plea that the respondent would accept or offer. Variation in the outcomes is created through experimental variation in the information presented to the respondents. Structural regression models are estimated to ?t the formal theoretical models, and the instrumental variables method is used to correct for measurement error in the estimate for probability of conviction. The data support the basic shadow model, with minor modi?cations, for only prosecutors and defense attorneys. Controlling for the characteristics of the individual actors and their jurisdictions adds explanatory value to the model, although these control variables did not affect the key co-ef?cients from the shadow model

Assessing Compensation Statutes For The Wrongly Convicted

As the discovery of wrongful convictions grows, so does concern in the legal community and public sphere about actual innocence. Though research on miscarriages of justice has grown tremendously, most has focused on the factors contributing to wrongful convictions, with relatively little attention paid to the post-release struggles of exonerees. Specifically, social scientists have not yet examined policies designed to assist the exonerated in their return to society. This study provides a content analysis of existing compensation statutes for the wrongly convicted. Results show that just more than half of American states have compensation statutes for exonerees, and the assistance offered varies tremendously from state to state. Assessing current statutes in comparison to a model standard indicates that whereas some jurisdictions provide fairly comprehensive packages, others offer little in the way of reentry assistance. The importance of such statutes and implications for the wrongly convicted are discussed

Attempts To Debias Wishful Thinking In The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

People’s preferences for an outcome can influence how they perceive the likelihood of that outcome over others. For example, a football fan may overestimate the likelihood of his favorite team winning an upcoming game. This phenomenon is referred to as wishful thinking. Previous research has examined many factors that could potentially decrease wishful thinking, and most of these attempts have been unsuccessful. For example, even when given an incentive to make an accurate prediction, participant’s preferences still influenced their predictions. The current study expands previous literature by examining how additional and accurate information influences wishful thinking. I predicted that providing participants with additional information would decrease the amount of wishful thinking they demonstrate in predicting the outcome of the U.S. 2016 Presidential Election. Among other questions, participants were asked to indicate which candidate they preferred to win the election. Then, participants were either given no information, current polling information, or election expert opinions. Participants then predicted who they thought would win the election. Inconsistent with my hypothesis, providing additional information did not decrease wishful thinking. This study is consistent with other failed attempts to decrease wishful thinking and highlights how influential people’s preferences can be to the judgments they make

Confident Bastards: The Influence Of Advisor Confidence And Likeability On Advice Taking

Advice taking has been researched in many different areas. Previous literature shows multiple factors can affect the likelihood of someone taking advice. For example, people are typically more likely to follow advice when the advice is expressed confidently rather than in an unsure manner (Gaertig & Simmons, 2018). Additionally, when people report a higher liking of the advice giver, they are more likely to follow the advice (Bo Feng & MacGeorge, 2010). Given what is known about the influence of confidence and likeability on advice taking, the current study combined these factors to examine whether the influence of confidence depends on how much one likes the advisor. Advisor likeability was manipulated by having the participant read a passage they believed an advisor wrote depicting the advisor as either likeable or unlikeable. Next, participants received advice expressed confidently or in an unsure manner from this advisor regarding a number of trivia questions. Lastly, participants answered the questions. Participants were more likely to take the advice expressed confidently as compared to in an unsure manner. The advisors’ likeability did not significantly impact levels of advice taking, and the influence of confidence was similar regardless of whether the advisor was liked or disliked