Richard E. Redding

Chapman University

Reforming the science and profession of psychology to be less ideologically and politically biased requires that we have greater viewpoint diversity in our ranks. Ways to recruit and support graduate students and faculty having diverse sociopolitical views are discussed. Next, I discuss inclusive curricula and pedagogy for educating students about...

The editors introduce the problem of ideological and political bias in psychology as it influences the socialization and teaching of undergraduate and graduate students, and its application to clinical work. Bias also shapes how scientific hypotheses are tested; public policy initiatives promoted by professional practice guilds; the hiring of facul...

This chapter analyzes the political biases inherent in the now popular “social justice counseling” movement. We trace the origins of “social justice counseling” to the multicultural movement in psychology, especially in the field of counseling psychology, over the last 30 years. While recognizing the real benefits of its ecological perspective on c...

Most psychologists are politically left-of-center while few are right-of-center or centrist. The political views of psychologists can and frequently do color and skew their teaching and research, particularly on policy-relevant issues, and may impede their ability to serve diverse clients and communities. Because the lack of sociopolitical diversit...

Leading academics in the social sciences and psychology have argued that the leftist domination of higher education faculty contributes to ideological orthodoxy on campus, signaling to conservative and even centrist students and faculty that their views are unwelcome and that expressing those views poses risks to career success and advancement. We...

The role of sociopolitical values remains a neglected factor in clinical practice. Many clinicians regularly commit “cultural malpractice” by failing to take into account their own sociopolitical values and those of their clients. However, sociopolitical values may be the most important factor to consider in any culturally-competent psychotherapy t...

Academic psychology has become increasingly non-diverse politically, which skews and impedes social psychological science (as Duarte et al. argue). We should embrace viewpoint diversity, especially since the arguments favoring sociopolitical diversity are identical to those for demographic and cultural diversity. Doing so will produce a more robust...

Publication of the study, How Different are the Adult Children of Parents Who Have Same-Sex Relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study (Regnerus, 2012), caused a firestorm in the scientific community. Unlike previous studies, it found differences between the children raised by parents who had experienced a same-sex relationship as...

Inbar and Lammers (2012, this issue) contribute to the growing empirical evidence of discrimination against conservative (i.e., right-of-center) people and ideas not only in social and personality psychology, but within the academy generally. Because sociopolitical values are often a core component of self-identity that significantly impact our int...

This study examined how judicial knowledge and attitudes about transfer affects transfer decisions by juvenile court judges. Participants included 232 juvenile court judges from around the country who completed a vignette survey that presented a prototypical case involving a serious juvenile offender. Participants were asked to decide whether the j...

A sizable minority of mental health professionals continue to use treatment methods that are totally lacking in scientific support, some of which harm their patients. Particularly when a treatment has been demonstrated to be harmful and effective evidence-based treatments are available, they should be liable for malpractice. We need malpractice ref...

Developmental research on social influences on adolescents can guide practices aimed to prevent homicidal youth violence. School shootings have repeatedly raised questions about the contributory role of bullying and entertainment violence, how news media publicity might produce copycat crimes, and whether stiffer criminal sanctions might have a det...

Professor Scott Taylor’s Spirituality and Academic Performance at a Catholic Law School: An Empirical Study was disheartening to Catholics and fellow travelers because it reported finding no relationship between the spirituality of law students and their academic performance at a prominent Catholic law school committed to its religious identity. In...

This is the introductory chapter for the edited book, The Politically Correct University: Problems, Scope, and Reforms, which explores the culture of political correctness in higher education. We focus on the problem of liberal political orthodoxy in teaching and scholarship and seek to understand how diversity – of race, ethnicity, gender, and sex...

Judges play a central role in decision making in the justice system. This chapter reviews the extant empirical research on judicial decision making in criminal, juvenile, and civil cases. We discuss judges’ decision making about forensic mental health evidence introduced in these cases, judicial receptivity to various kinds of evidence, and their u...

In this chapter, we deconstruct the psychological goals and assumptions underlying the foundational principles of the politically correct university, which emphasize diversity in race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation but not sociopolitical ideas, and that require cultural sensitivity (seen in policies such as speech codes) so that minorit...

The effect of gay and lesbian parenting on children has been the touchstone issue in much of the recent state litigation on same sex marriage, with opponents of same sex marriage arguing that there is a rational basis for denying marriage rights to gays and lesbians because the central purpose of marriage is procreation and childrearing, but that c...

An underlying assumption in the nationwide policy shift toward transferring more juveniles to criminal court has been the belief that stricter, adult sentences will act as either a specific or general deterrent to juvenile crime. With respect to general deterrence - whether transfer laws deter would-be offenders from committing crimes - it is impor...

Studies consistently show a high prevalence of mental disorders among criminal defendants. Forensic mental health issues thus arise frequently in the criminal justice system and are commonly encountered by prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judgesmuch more so than some criminal law doctrines (e.g., necessity, duress, impossibility) routinely taugh...

In this paper, we provide an overview of variability across jurisdictions in family law relevant to lesbian and gay parents and their children, showing that some courts have been negatively disposed to these families. We summarize recent research findings suggesting that lesbian and gay parents are as likely as are heterosexual parents to provide h...

Conservative and libertarian professors are becoming increasingly rare at colleges and universities, and this lack of intellectual diversity hampers the development of innovative solutions to the nation's problems.

When mental health experts provide information to courts on the results of a risk assessment conducted on a defendant or patient, they engage in “risk communication.” We examined the effects of four different forms of risk communication (prediction, categorical, risk factors/risk management, or hybrid) on judges’ (n = 253) perceptions of risk asses...

‎We summarize the most systematic work on George W. Bush's psyche. SAT scores and other available measures indicate that Bush has ‎sufficient intelligence to serve as president. Yet the best studies, in which raters evaluate ‎statements without being aware of their source, suggest that Bush lacks integrative complexity ‎and thus views issues withou...

Sentencing is where much of the action is in criminal practice, particularly since ninety percent or more of cases never go to trial but are settled through plea bargains. Acting within the constraints of applicable presumptive or mandatory sentencing guidelines, probation officers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges typically rely on their...

This book explores and offers remedies to the culture of political correctness in American higher education. We focus on the problem of liberal political orthodoxy in teaching and scholarship and seek to understand how diversity – of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, but not of ideas -- has become the dominant ideology in higher educ...

Provides an overview of research on the deterrent effects of transferring youth from juvenile to criminal courts, focusing on large-scale comprehensive OJJDP-funded studies on the effect of transfer laws on recidivism. The Bulletin reviews all of the extant research on the general and specific deterrent effects of transferring juveniles to adult cr...

This article reviews the new book by Martha Peters and Don Peters, Juris Types: Learning Law Through Self-Understanding (2007). The book proposes that legal pedagogy and student learning strategies be guided in part by Carl Jung's Psychological Type Theory and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ("MBTI"). The MBTI is one of the most widely used persona...

Humans have the ability to monitor and control their conscious cognitive processes. This ability, called metacognition, implies that people can learn to optimize their cognitive processes. Recent research in metacognition provides new ways of accelerating learning and skill transfer through an improvement in the decision-making, problem solving, an...

Self-help books for psychological disorders have become increasingly popular, yet there is surprisingly little research on their scientific status or overall utility. The authors identified 50 top-selling self-help books for anxiety, depressive, and trauma-related disorders. Using a scale derived from the literature on bibliotherapy, expert psychol...

Parent training is consistently highlighted as one of the most effective means of preventing delinquency and treating young children with conduct problems, and it has proven to be one of the most cost-effective interventions for doing so. There is, however, far less evidence supporting the efficacy of parent-training programs with adolescents and j...

Brain-damaged defendants are seen everyday in American courtrooms, and in many cases, their criminal behavior appears to be the product of extremely poor judgment and self-control. Some have a disorder in the frontal lobes, the area of the brain responsible for judgment and impulse control. Yet because defendants suffering from frontal lobe dysfunc...

This chapter discusses the research on the general and specific deterrent effects of transferring juveniles for trial in adult criminal court, identifies gaps in our knowledge base that require further research, discusses the circumstances under which effective deterrence may be achieved, and examines whether there are effective alternatives for ac...

Juvenile court judges and others working in the juvenile justice system have a wide variety of dispositional and sentencing options available for the juvenile offenders under their jurisdiction. For serious, violent or chronic offenders, these options increasingly involve transferring juveniles from juvenile court for trial and sentencing in the cr...

This chapter provides an introduction to the major classes of mental disorder and the ways in which they are salient to selected aspects of American criminal and civil law, focusing particularly on criminal law issues.

This chapter discusses the mental health treatment options for juvenile offenders placed in residential psychiatric or juvenile justice settings. After discussing the effectiveness and potential risks of residential care, it explores the unique treatment, behavioral management, and service delivery issues arising in residential settings and the imp...

This chapter reports the prevalence and characteristics of common mental health disorders in juvenile delinquents, and describes the most promising mental health treatment options for juvenile delinquents. Further, risk factors that predispose juveniles to delinquent behavior and mental health problems are reviewed. Finally, the higher rates of men...

Juvenile offending and anti-social behaviour are enormous societal concerns. This broad-reaching volume summarizes the current evidence on prevention, diversion, causes, and rates of delinquency, as well as assessment of risk and intervention needs. A distinguished cast of contributors from law, psychology, and psychiatry describe what we know abou...

This article provides an overview of what is known about the prevalence, diagnosis, and effective treatment of mood disorders among youths, particularly among juvenile offenders, and discusses the unique problems that arise for the delivery of treatment services. The relationship between mood disorders and disruptive or delinquent behaviors as well...

An underlying assumption in the nationwide policy shift toward transferring more juveniles to criminol court has been the belief that stricter, adult sentences will act as either a specific or general deterrent to juvenile crime. With respect to general deterrence - whether transfer laws deter would-be offenders from committing crimes - it is impor...

Youth Aggression and Violence (see record 2001-01234-000 ) is a reference book that all delinquency researchers should have on their bookshelf. An engaging read, the book concisely synthesizes the large body of scientific research on youth aggression as well as research on prevention and treatment, leaving readers with an excellent organizational s...

Across the nation, serious and chronic juvenile offenders are increasingly being tried as adults in criminal court and incarcerated in adult correctional facilities. This trend raises important questions for policy makers. To what extent do trials in criminal courts and incarceration in adult prisons promote or inhibit community protection and the...

Comments on an article by by D. T. Lykken (see American Psychologist, 2001, Vol 56, 885-894) which called for parental licensing, which would require prospective parents to meet legislatively defined criteria before they could conceive or adopt children. The current author commends Lykken's proposal for putting the needs of children--to be raised b...

In recent years, as juvenile justice systems across the country have become more punitive and courts have held that juveniles are entitled to adult-like levels of due process protection, the adjudicative competence of juveniles has increasingly come into question. To clarify this trend, we reviewed the current state of the law in the fifty states a...

Comments on an article by by D. T. Lykken (see American Psychologist, 2001, Vol 56, 885-894) which called for parental licensing, which would require prospective parents to meet legislatively defined criteria before they could conceive or adopt children. The current author commends Lykken's proposal for putting the needs of children--to be raised b...

The reviewer notes that this book (see record 2000-16209-000 ) focuses on youth trauma and violence through the etiology and treatment of violent juvenile delinquency. Drawing on detailed interviews with boys who murdered, Garbarino integrates a wide range of theory, research, and clinical experience to paint a compelling portrait of the reasons bo...

Replies to comments made by S. R. Wester and D. L. Vogel (see record 2002-12457-009), E. E. Sampson (see record 2002-12457-010), R. S. Campbell et al (see record 2002-12457-012), and S. C. Rooney (see record 2002-12457-013) regarding the article by R. E. Redding (see record 2001-00465-001) which discusses pluralism and sociopolitical diversity in p...

In the wake of recent school shootings, communities and legislatures are searching for law enforcement solutions to the perceived epidemic of school violence. A variety of legal measures have been debated and proposed. These include: the enactment of tougher gun control laws and more vigorous federal and local enforcement of existing gun control la...

The testimony of mental health experts is often important evidence considered by criminal courts in determining issues arising throughout the adjudicative process, but not all evidence provided by experts is equally valid or probative. Using a hypothetical insanity defense case, we compared the preferences of Virginia judges, prosecutors, and defen...

Psychology celebrates diversity, recognizes the value and legitimacy of diverse beliefs, and strives to be inclusive. Yet, the profession lacks sociopolitical diversity. Most psychologists are politically liberal, and conservatives are vastly underrepresented in the profession. Moreover, when sociopolitical views guide the research, advocacy, or pr...

Treatment foster care (TFC) is a normalizing environment in which to treat those children whose particular needs are not addressed in traditional foster care and for whom an institutional setting is a restrictive and unnecessary alternative. However, when the foster care placements of these emotionally and behaviorally disturbed children fail, as t...

States have responded to the public's outrage at rising juvenile crime by revising their transfer statutes to make it easier to transfer juvenile offenders for trial and sentencing in criminal court and possible incarceration in adult prisons. These changing trends in juvenile justice raise three questions about what actually happens to juveniles o...

States have responded to the public's outrage at rising juvenile crime by revising their transfer statutes to make it easier to transfer juvenile offenders for trial and sentencing in criminal court and possible incarceration in adult prisons. These changing trends in juvenile justice raise three questions about what actually happens to juveniles o...

One theory to explain why courts often ignore relevant social science research is that it often refutes judges' sociopolitical beliefs. Using the death penalty as the exemplar social issue, this study explored whether lawyers' sociopolitical attitudes affect their judgments about the legal relevance of social science research introduced in court ca...

Understanding children's capacities in legal contexts is an urgent priority for psychology and the law. The distinction between capacity and performance is discussed in light of two research goals: (a) identifying children's capacities relevant to law; and (b) identifying the circumstances under which their performance varies. This discussion leads...

Youth offending and other antisocial behaviors are a great concern in contemporary society. How such concern is manifested, whether through law, policy, legal decisions about individuals, or the decisions of schools or families about adolescents, has significant implications for liberty, public safety, and accountability--important cornerstones of...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Virginia, 1997. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-115).