Law and human behavior
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When different clinicians evaluate the same criminal defendant's legal sanity, do they reach the same conclusion? Because Hawaii law requires multiple, independent evaluations when questions about legal sanity arise, Hawaii allows for the first contemporary study of the reliability of legal sanity opinions in routine practice in the United States. We examined 483 evaluation reports, addressing 165 criminal defendants, in which up to three forensic psychiatrists or psychologists offered independent opinions on a defendant's legal sanity. Evaluators reached unanimous agreement regarding legal sanity in only 55.1% of cases. ⋯ But when judges disagreed with the majority opinion, they usually did so to find defendants legally sane, rather than insane. Overall, this study indicates that reliability among practicing forensic evaluators addressing legal sanity may be poorer than the field has tended to assume. Although agreement appears more likely in some cases than others, the frequent disagreements suggest a need for improved training and practice.
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Law and human behavior · Oct 2012
"That never happened": adults' discernment of children's true and false memory reports.
Adults' evaluations of children's reports can determine whether legal proceedings are undertaken and whether they ultimately lead to justice. The current study involved 92 undergraduates and 35 laypersons who viewed and evaluated videotaped interviews of 3- and 5-year-olds providing true or false memory reports. The children's reports fell into the following categories based on a 2 (event type: true vs. false) × 2 (child report: assent vs. denial) factorial design: accurate reports, false reports, accurate denials, and false denials. ⋯ Participant age predicted performance. These findings underscore the greater difficulty adults have in evaluating young children's false denials compared with other types of reports. Implications for law-related situations in which adults are called upon to evaluate children's statements are discussed.
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Law and human behavior · Feb 2012
Improving eyewitness identification accuracy by screening out those who say they don't know.
Improving eyewitness identification evidence remains a key priority for research. Basic laboratory research has consistently demonstrated that allowing participants to withhold answers about which they are unsure leads to improved accuracy. Surprisingly, this approach has not been the subject of comprehensive investigation in the eyewitness identification literature. ⋯ Only 2.2% of witnesses spontaneously used a don't know response, compared to 19.3% who used it when the option was explicit. Compared with the forced-report decisions, free-report decisions were more accurate, more diagnostic of the suspect's guilt or innocence, and came at no cost to the number of correct decisions rendered. These data suggest that utilisation of an explicit don't know option may be of practical value.
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Law and human behavior · Feb 2011
Gender harassment: broadening our understanding of sex-based harassment at work.
This study challenges the common legal and organizational practice of privileging sexual advance forms of sex-based harassment, while neglecting gender harassment. Survey data came from women working in two male-dominated contexts: the military and the legal profession. ⋯ When compared to non-victims, gender-harassed women showed significant decrements in professional and psychological well-being. These findings underscore the seriousness of gender harassment, which merits greater attention by both law and social science.
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Law and human behavior · Oct 2009
The influence of accounts and remorse on mock jurors' judgments of offenders.
Defendants often provide accounts that minimize their responsibility for the accused offense. Jurors attribute responsibility to defendants and decide legal outcomes based on the given account. ⋯ The remorseful defendant was found guilty more frequently than the remorseless defendant in the no explanation and (marginally) excuse conditions. Limitations and future research are discussed.