No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Videotaped confessions: Is guilt in the eye of the camera?
Abstract
It is noted that in criminal trials, fact finders that include judges and jurors make decisions based on the evaluation of the evidence presented. The kind of evidence that possibly has the greatest impact on the decision making of these trial fact finders is a defendant's prior admission of guilt. The type of interrogation pressure used to induce an admission of guilt is one factor that can bias the evaluation of confession evidence. This chapter describes findings from a programmatic series of studies that demonstrate that confession evidence presented in a videotaped format, in certain instances, can introduce an undesirable bias in the evaluation of evidence by trial decision-makers. The chapter presents results from other experiments that examine the basic processing mechanisms underlying this bias and discusses the policy implications of the present research for the system of jurisprudence. The basis lies in the extensive scientific literature concerning how people go about attributing causality to the behaviors and events that they observe in their environment.
... Considerable evidence shows that people fall prey to illusory causation even in situations in which their judgments are of considerably greater import. Across 11 different experiments, it has been demonstrated that evaluations of a criminal confession presented on videotape are biased by the camera perspective taken during its initial recording (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001). The findings are consistent with more mundane instances of illusory causation: Videotaped confessions recorded with the camera focused on the suspect-compared with videotapes from other camera points of view (e.g., focused equally on the suspect and interrogator) or with more traditional presentation formats (i.e., transcripts and audiotapes)-led mock jurors to judge that the confessions were more voluntary. ...
... Eighty-three participants were asked to assume the role of jurors in a study ostensibly designed to "discover how people in real courtrooms make decisions about the validity of confession evidence." After a brief explanation of their juridic responsibilities, participants were assigned to segment or only view either the suspect-focus or the detective-focus version of a videotaped confession to a burglary we used in a previous study (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, et al., 2001). Those having to segment were once again given two buttons to press, only this time one was for recording the meaningful actions of the suspect and the other was for recording the meaningful actions of the detec-tive. ...
... Those having to segment were once again given two buttons to press, only this time one was for recording the meaningful actions of the suspect and the other was for recording the meaningful actions of the detec-tive. Following the presentation of the confession evidence, participants provided their judgments of the confession's voluntariness on rating scales identical to those used in prior investigations of the camera-perspective bias (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, et al., 2001). Specifically, on separate 9-point scales participants indicated the degree to which the confession was coerced (1 ϭ not at all and 9 ϭ to a large degree ) and the degree to which it was voluntary (1 ϭ not at all and 9 ϭ to a large degree ); they also indicated whether it was (1) given freely by the suspect or (9) forced out by the detective . ...
... Is such faith in the diagnostic and remedial power of videotaped interrogations justified, however? Daniel Lassiter and his colleagues (see review by Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley & Beers, 2001) have performed a series of studies showing that the way in which an interrogation is taped can bias perceptions of the coercive nature of the interrogation and the validity of the confession. Most interrogations are videotaped such that the camera is positioned behind the interrogator (so that he or she is either not visible or only the back of the head is visible), and directly focused on the suspect (Geller, 1992;Kassin, 1997b). ...
... That is, in attempting to attribute causality to an action, the perceiver will be unduly influenced by what is most perceptually salient. In the context of social interaction, this salience effect leads observers to overestimate the causal role of individuals who are seen most clearly (see Lassiter et al., 2001;McArthur, 1981;Taylor & Fiske, 1978 for reviews of this literature). As noted earlier, there is already a pervasive tendency of observers to fall prey to the fundamental attribution error-or the tendency to see behavior as much more voluntary than appropriate. ...
... As noted earlier, there is already a pervasive tendency of observers to fall prey to the fundamental attribution error-or the tendency to see behavior as much more voluntary than appropriate. This failure to fully appreciate the causal role of situational forces is exacerbated when these forces are rendered less salient by virtue of the observer's visual perspective (Lassiter et al., 2001). Hence a camera perspective that focuses fully on the suspect while failing to show the interrogator can be expected to bias the perceiver toward the attribution that the suspect's behaviors are voluntary-and away from the attribution that the suspect's behavior was coerced by the interrogator. ...
This chapter explores the “road to perdition”—the nature and typical sequence of interrogative strategies and events leading to false confession as well as the underlying psychological principles through which they exert their influence. In recognition of the various contributory causes of false confession, the chapter considers several classification schemes for confessions and their underlying causes. The chapter provides a brief summary of common sequences of police tactics—beginning with selection of a suspect, and following the interrogation of that suspect through the production of the full confession and account of the crime. Basic psychological processes through which specific interrogative tactics exert their effects have been considered. The chapter focuses on individual differences that render specific individuals particularly vulnerable to influence and false confession. The chapter also considers the consequences of confession evidence for eventual disposition of the case. The interrogation tactics themselves are designed to both constrain and falsify the information suspects use to analyze their situations.
... In a somewhat different context, research has been conducted in order to investigate if the focus of the camera biases the perception of suspects confessing during an interrogation (see Lassiter, 2004). The main finding is that observers watching a videotaped confession with the camera focused on the suspect alone (compared to observers watching the same confession recorded from a different camera perspective) tend to perceive the confession as more voluntary and reliable (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001;Lassiter, Geers, Handley, Weiland, & Munhall, 2002). Thus, it seems to be a camera perspective bias. ...
... Hence, we were able to examine the effects of different camera focus, while keeping the distance constant (all this in line with previous research, e.g. Lassiter et al., 2001). In brief, our design allowed us to answer the most pertinent research questions regarding effects of camera perspective. ...
... Hypothesis 2: camera focus We predicted, in line with previous research (Lassiter et al., 2001) and the Illusory causation phenomenon (MacArthur, 1980), that the observers in the 'child only' condition (vs 'child and interviewer' condition) would perceive the children in more positive terms. As our main interest was to investigate potential differences between different types of camera focus this hypothesis only concerns the observers in the two 'medium shot' conditions (i.e. ...
This experimental study investigates adults’ perception and assessments of children's testimonies as a function of camera shot (close-up shot vs medium shot vs long shot) and camera focus (child only vs child and interviewer). Truth-telling and lying children were interviewed and videotaped simultaneously by four cameras, each taking a different visual perspective (‘close-up shot/child only’, ‘medium shot/child only’, ‘medium shot/child and interviewer’, ‘long shot/child and interviewer’). Mock jurors (N=256) watched the videotaped testimonies and rated their perception of the children's statement and appearance, and assessed the children's veracity. Children seen in long shot were perceived as more neutral and relaxed, and children seen in close-up were perceived as having to think harder. The adult's deception detection accuracy was at chance level. The results suggest that legal policy-makers should consider the outcome of psycho-legal research on camera perspective when establishing and/or reforming standards for police interviews and courtroom procedures.
... It is not reduced by the opportunity for decision makers to deliberate before rendering their judgments, and it persists even when they are made to feel particularly accountable for their evaluations. Finally, urging mock jurors to concentrate on the content of the confession, rather than the manner in which it was presented, does not diminish the prejudicial effect of camera perspective (see Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001 for a more detailed review of these and additional studies). ...
... To examine this possibility, we collected data from an additional 64 participants (Ohio University undergraduates) using the same methods as previously described, with the exception that participants were asked to address only the following question: "If the suspect were convicted, how severe should his sentence be?" Participants responded on a 9-point scale (1 = minimum sentence, 9 = maximum sentence). This measure has been used once previously to assess the camera perspective bias, and the results showed that people observing a suspect focus version of a confession recommended more severe sentences (Lassiter et al., 2001). Interestingly, in that study, path analyses revealed that sentence recommendations were partially mediated by voluntariness and guilt judgments but also were directly affected by the camera perspective manipulation. ...
... In 11 previous studies, various attempts were made to reduce the biasing effect of camera perspective on decision makers' evaluations of videotaped confessions (Lassiter et al., 2001). Heightening the accountability of decision makers, allowing them to deliberate in groups before rendering their judgments, explicitly forewarning them of the bias, and having a judge, in the context of an elaborate trial simulation, provide detailed instructions about how to evaluate confession evidence, all failed to diminish the prejudicial effect of camera perspective. ...
Prior research has established that simply altering the perspective from which a videotaped confession is recorded influences judgments of the confession's voluntariness and the suspect's guilt. This study examined whether, when evaluating a videotaped confession, a higher degree of attributional complexity would buffer people from the contaminating effects of camera perspective. We found that although people high and low in attributional complexity differed in their overall verdicts and voluntariness assessments, they were comparably swayed by the camera's perspective. That is, consistent with prior demonstrations of the camera perspective bias, the proportion of guilty verdicts and the proportion assessing the confession was voluntary were both significantly greater when the camera focused on the suspect rather than focused equally on the suspect and the interrogator. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
... Stage One studies were short and methodologically simple, primarily using continuous measures (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001). Stage Two experiments, requiring 3 to 5 hours of participant involvement, utilized realistic videotaped simulations of actual trials. ...
... Reilly became convinced of his own guilt and eventually signed a statement confessing to the murder of his mother. Two years after being imprisoned, Reilly's conviction was appealed and charges were dropped after it was determined that the prosecution had withheld exonerating evidence (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001;. ...
... In line with prior studies on social attribution, which demonstrate that observers of an interaction overestimate the causal role of the individual who can be seen most clearly (see McArthur 1981 andTaylor andFiske 1978 for extensive reviews of this literature), we (Lassiter, Beers, Geers, Handley, Munhall, and Weiland, in press;Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, and Beers 2001;Lassiter and Irvine 1986;Lassiter, Munhall, Geers, Weiland, and Handley, in press;Lassiter, Slaw, Briggs, and Scanlan 1992) found that videotaped confessions recorded with the camera focused on the suspect-compared to other camera points of view (i.e., focused equally on the suspect and interrogator or focused solely on the interrogator) or to more traditional presentation formats (i.e., transcripts and audiotapes)-resulted in the judgment that the confessions were more voluntary. This biasing effect of camera perspective appears to be quite robust and pervasive. ...
... The reader should not conclude from the present results that voluntariness is the only legally relevant judgment systematically influenced by camera perspective. As pointed out at the beginning of this article, previous studies have demonstrated that camera perspective also affects all-important decisions regarding guilt or innocence, with a focus on the suspect producing the greatest proportion of guilty verdicts (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, and Beers 2001). One experiment (Lassiter et al.,in press,Study 4) found that the impact of camera perspective extends even to sentencing recommendations, with more severe sentences being recommended by those viewing the suspect-focus version of a confession. ...
Presenting criminal confessions on videotape is increasingly commonplace, but investigations of the impact of this format on trial decision-makers' judgments are relatively sparse. Prior studies have found that camera perspective affects observers' judgments of the voluntary status of a videotaped confession. More specifically, when the camera is focused only on the confessor, as opposed to focused on both the confessor and interrogator equally, observers judge the confession to be more voluntary. The purpose of the present study was to determine if camera perspective also influences the perceived veracity or believability of a videotaped confession. Participants viewed either a confessor-focus or equal-focus videotaped confession and subsequently provided both ratings of the voluntariness and credibility of the confessor's statements. The biasing effect of camera perspective on voluntariness judgments was replicated once again. Judgments of the confessor's credibility, however, were unaffected by camera perspective. We conclude that previous demonstrations of the camera perspective bias in videotaped confessions were not simply the result of changes in observers' assessments of the confessor's credibility.
... However, when recording testimonial evidence on video one must consider the camera perspective from which the recording is made. Research has shown that the camera perspective from which a criminal confession is videotaped influences assessments of the voluntariness of the confession and of the suspect's guilt (Lassiter, 2002;Lassiter, Beers, et al., 2002;Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001;Lassiter & Irvine, 1986;Ratcliff, Lassiter, Schmidt, & Snyder, 2006). When the camera is focused on the suspect only, confessions tend to be perceived as more voluntary and reliable than when the camera is focused on both the interrogator and the suspect, or on the interrogator alone. ...
... In contrast to our predictions, to the findings of Landstr€ om and Granhag (2008), Lassiter and colleagues (e.g., Lassiter, 2001;Lassiter, Beers, et al., 2002;, and to the theory of illusory causation (MacArthur, 1980;Taylor & Fiske, 1975), we found no significant effects of the camera perspectives used in the present study. That is, the balanced focus did not produce judgements that differed significantly from the PiP mode. ...
PurposeTwo experiments were conducted to examine the effects of (1) child victims’ emotional expression during testimony and (2) the camera perspective used to record the testimony, on judgements of credibility. Methods
Law students (N = 155 in Experiment 1; N = 86 in Experiment 2) watched a child harassment complainant provide a statement in an emotional or neutral manner, presented using different camera perspectives: balanced focus (i.e., a shot portraying an equal focus on the child complainant and the interviewer) versus picture-in-picture (PiP; i.e., a shot portraying only the child with an inset window depicting both the child and the interviewer in the corner of the screen) in Experiment 1 and PiP versus child focus (i.e., a shot depicting only the child) in Experiment 2. ResultsAlthough no effect was found for camera perspective, the results provide support for an emotional victim effect (EVE); the child was perceived as more credible and truthful when communicating the statement in an emotional (vs. neutral) manner. Moreover, the results provide corroborating evidence for the assumption that the EVE rests on both cognitive (expectancy confirmation) and affective (compassion) mechanisms. Conclusions
These findings extend previous research by showing that the EVE and its underlying mechanisms apply to judgements of child complainants in the context of non-sexual crimes and appear to be robust against variations of camera perspectives. Legal implications are discussed.
... For instance, participants who watched body-worn camera footage of police conduct rated the officers' behavior as less intentional than those who watched dashboard camera footage of the same incidents (Turner et al., 2019). Participants who watched a video of a police interrogation that focused on the suspect were more likely to judge the suspect's statement to be voluntary and to find the suspect guilty of the charged offense than were participants who watched a video of the same interrogation focused on the interrogator (camera perspective bias; e.g., Lassiter et al., 2001). Features of the picture's display provide yet another source of bias. ...
Naïve realism, the belief that one’s own subjective experience mirrors objective reality, is often posited as a basic feature of perception, cognition, and social judgment. Analogously, people are often presumed to be naïve realists about pictures, believing that photos and videos of the sort offered as legal evidence correspond unproblematically to the objective reality they depict. Legal decision makers who are naïve about evidentiary photos and videos tend to be unaware of the ways in which their perceptions and judgments based on those pictures may be biased and, because they believe themselves to be simply registering reality objectively, may find it more difficult to resolve disagreements with those who see the same pictures differently. Yet, naïve realism about pictures has been broadly assumed rather than rigorously analyzed. This article explains the conceptual support and experimental evidence for naïve realism about pictures and describes how the trial process may or may not mitigate its impact in the courtroom. The article concludes with ideas for research that could clarify the underlying mechanisms of naïve realism about pictures and suggests interventions to help legal decision makers become savvier consumers of visual evidence.
... For future research we offer some suggestions. First, participants could be shown the trial in a video format to determine if there are any differences in the way the trial is presented (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001). Moreover, other independent variables such as eye witnesses or DNA samples could be utilized to see what differences there are between the new additions, and whether or not biases would still persist despite concrete evidence (Magalhães, Dinis-Oliveira, Silva, Corte-Real, & Nuno Vieira, 2015). ...
Transgender individuals may experience social discrimination and unfair legal considerations as crime victims. The current purpose was to investigate the relationship between the participant/jurors' gender, the victims' gender identity, and judge's instructions to ignore the gender identity of the victim on perceptions of the victim and the crime and verdicts rendered in a sexual assault case. Overall, crime severity ratings were significantly lower for the trans male victim compared to the cisgender female victim. Male participants reported lower crime severity ratings for trials involving transgender victims compared to cisgender victims. However, victim blaming, likelihood that the defendant committed the crime, sentencing recommendations, verdict confidence, and conviction rates did not vary by the victim's gender identity, the participant's gender identity, nor the judge's instructions. Participant gender as a predictor of verdict approached significance, indicating a trend for males to render more not guilty verdicts and females to render more guilty verdicts. In summary, male jurors perceived the crimes involving transgender victims as less severe and this may have impacted the rate of not guilty verdicts.
... Şüphelilerin suçlu olup olmadığına ilişkin kararlar kameranın görüş açısının kime odaklandığına bağlı olarak değişebilmektedir. Örneğin, kameranın sorguyu yapanı da gösterdiği duruma kıyasla sadece şüpheliyi gösterdiği durumda karar vericiler soruşturma ortamının baskı/zorlama içermediğine, şüphelinin itirafı polis baskısı olmadan gönüllü bir şekilde verdiğine ve şüphelinin suçlu olduğuna daha çok inanma eğiliminde olmaktadır (Lassiter, Geers, Handley, Weiland ve Munhall, 2002;Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley ve Beers, 2001;Lassiter ve Irvine, 1986;Lassiter, Ware, Ratcliff ve Irvin, 2009). Üstelik, bu etki yalnızca sıradan katılımcılar için değil polisler ve yargıçlar için de geçerli görünmektedir (Lassitter, Diamond, Schmidt ve Elek, 2007). ...
Bu derlemede, insanların işlemedikleri suçları çeşitli nedenlerle kabul etmesine
karşılık gelen sahte itiraf olgusu incelenmektedir. Kesin oranları tam olarak bilinmemekle
birlikte, sahte itirafların hem sanılandan hem de kanıtlanmış sahte itiraf vakalarının
gösterdiğinden daha yaygın oldukları tahmin edilmektedir. Güncel veriler sahte itirafların,
sonradan beraat kararı verilen haksız mahkumiyetlerle sonuçlanmış davaların yaklaşık dörtte
birinde rol oynadığını ve dolayısıyla haksız mahkumiyetlerin önemli nedenleri arasında yer
aldığını göstermektedir. Çalışmada, sahte itiraf alanyazını problemin psikolojik boyutunu
merkeze alan bir yaklaşımla ve çeşitli yönleriyle ele alınmıştır. İlk olarak, sahte itirafların
kuramsal çerçevesine ilişkin bilgi ve tartışmalar gözden geçirilmiştir. İkinci olarak, bu
olgunun varlığını ve yaygınlığını ortaya koyan veriler gözden geçirilmiş ve tartışılmıştır.
Üçüncü olarak, insanları sahte itirafta bulunmaya sevk eden bazı kişiler arası farklılıklar ile
çeşitli çevresel risk etmenleri ele alınmıştır. Son olarak, sahte itirafları önleme ve/veya
azaltmaya yönelik tedbirler, politika önerileri ve reform çağrıları gözden geçirilmiştir.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This paper reviews the false confession phenomenon, which refers to innocent
suspects' detailed admissions to crimes they did not commit. The exact incidence rate of false
confessions in the criminal justice system is not known and is estimated to be far more than
what common sense and documented false confession cases so far would tell. Recent
evidence showed that false confessions play a causal role in about one fourth of all
exonerations, indicating that they are among the leading causes of wrongful convictions of
innocent suspects. In this study, the false confession literature was reviewed from various
aspects, with a particular focus on psychological dimensions of the problem. Specifically,
first, the conceptual framework of false confessions was described. Second, the data on the
presence and prevalence of false confessions were overviewed and discussed. Third, a number
of individual differences and situational risk factors that lead innocent people to confess to
crimes they did not commit were examined. Finally, measures, policy recommendations and
reform calls with regards to preventing and/or reducing false confessions were overviewed.
... All this should increase the fact-finding accuracy of judges and juries. For the tapes to be complete and balanced, however, entire sessions should be recorded and the camera should adopt a 'neutral' or 'equal focus' perspective that shows both the accused and his or her interrogators (Lassiter et al. 2001). ...
... accurate crime facts that were known to police but were not in the public domain (Garrett, 2010(Garrett, , 2015, only 19% of respondents endorsed as reliable the proposition that confessions can be verified as true by the crime details they contain. Regarding videotaped confessions and informed by a good deal of research (Lassiter & Irvine, 1986; for a review, see Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001), 73% saw as sufficiently reliable the proposition that videotaped statements are perceived as more voluntary when the camera is focused on only the suspect-as opposed to an equal focus on both the suspect and interrogator. Finally, we tested for aspects of deception detection. ...
Eighty-seven experts on the psychology of confessions—many of whom were highly published, many with courtroom experience—were surveyed online about their opinions on 30 propositions of relevance to deception detection, police interrogations, confessions, and relevant general principles of psychology. As indicated by an agreement rate of at least 80%, there was a strong consensus that several findings are sufficiently reliable to present in court. This list includes but is not limited to the proposition that the risk of false confessions is increased not only by explicit threats and promises but by 2 common interrogation tactics—namely, the false evidence ploy and minimization tactics that imply leniency by offering sympathy and moral justification. Experts also strongly agreed that the risk of undue influence is higher among adolescents, individuals with compliant or suggestible personalities, and those with intellectual impairments or diagnosed psychological disorders. Additional findings indicated that experts set a high standard before judging a proposition to be sufficiently reliable for court—and an even higher standard on the question “Would you testify?” Regarding their role as scientific experts, virtually all respondents stated that their primary objective was to educate the jury and that juries are more competent at evaluating confession evidence with assistance from an expert than without. These results should assist trial courts and expert witnesses in determining what aspects of the science are generally accepted and suitable for presentation in court.
... Şüphelilerin suçlu olup olmadığına ilişkin kararlar kameranın görüş açısının kime odaklandığına bağlı olarak değişebilmektedir. Örneğin, kameranın sorguyu yapanı da gösterdiği duruma kıyasla sadece şüpheliyi gösterdiği durumda karar vericiler soruşturma ortamının baskı/zorlama içermediğine, şüphelinin itirafı polis baskısı olmadan gönüllü bir şekilde verdiğine ve şüphelinin suçlu olduğuna daha çok inanma eğiliminde olmaktadır (Lassiter, Geers, Handley, Weiland ve Munhall, 2002;Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley ve Beers, 2001;Lassiter ve Irvine, 1986;Lassiter, Ware, Ratcliff ve Irvin, 2009). Üstelik, bu etki yalnızca sıradan katılımcılar için değil polisler ve yargıçlar için de geçerli görünmektedir (Lassitter, Diamond, Schmidt ve Elek, 2007). ...
This paper reviews the false confession phenomenon, which refers to innocent
suspects' detailed admissions to crimes they did not commit. The exact incidence rate of false
confessions in the criminal justice system is not known and is estimated to be far more than
what common sense and documented false confession cases so far would tell. Recent
evidence showed that false confessions play a causal role in about one fourth of all
exonerations, indicating that they are among the leading causes of wrongful convictions of
innocent suspects. In this study, the false confession literature was reviewed from various
aspects, with a particular focus on psychological dimensions of the problem. Specifically,
first, the conceptual framework of false confessions was described. Second, the data on the
presence and prevalence of false confessions were overviewed and discussed. Third, a number
of individual differences and situational risk factors that lead innocent people to confess to
crimes they did not commit were examined. Finally, measures, policy recommendations and
reform calls with regards to preventing and/or reducing false confessions were overviewed.
... The authors also demonstrated that agreeable followers initially develop highquality relationship with leaders because of their high levels of cooperation and collaboration. Individuals, therefore, attribute observed behaviors to potential signals that capture their attention (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001;Smith & Miller, 1979) and generalize those attributions to individuals' general character. We therefore hypothesize: ...
Drawing from the sleep and emotion regulation model, and attribution theory, we argue that sleep can influence the quality of the relationship between leaders and their followers. Specifically, we examined the effects of lack of sleep on leader-follower relationship development at the beginning of their dyad tenure. We hypothesized that the negative effects of lack of sleep on relationships are mediated by hostility. Results based on 86 new dyads (first three days of their work relationship) showed support for our hypotheses (Study 1). Results based on 40 leaders and 120 followers over three months (five waves) also showed that lack of sleep influences perceptions of relationship quality via hostility for both leaders and followers (Study 2). Moreover, we found that the direct effects of follower lack of sleep affect leader perceptions of relationship quality in the first month of their dyad tenure but decreasingly so over time; the direct effects of a leader lack of sleep on follower perceptions of relationship quality did not vary based on dyad tenure. Results revealed that individuals are not aware of the impact of their own lack of sleep on other people’s perceptions of relationship quality, suggesting that leaders and followers may be damaging their relationship without realizing it.
... By directing visual attention toward the accused, the camera can thus lead jurors to underestimate the amount of pressure actually exerted by the ''hidden'' detective (Lassiter & Irvine, 1986;Lassiter, Slaw, Briggs, & Scanlan, 1992). Additional studies have confirmed that people are more attuned to the situational factors that elicit confessions whenever the interrogator is on camera than when the focus is solely on the suspect (Lassiter & Geers, 2004;Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001). Under these more balanced circumstances, juries make more informed attributions of voluntariness and guilt when they see not only the final confession but the conditions under which it was elicited (Lassiter, Geers, Handley, Weiland, & Munhall, 2002). ...
Recently, in a number of high-profile cases, defendants who were prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced on the basis of false confessions have been exonerated through DNA evidence. As a historical matter, confession has played a prominent role in religion, in psychotherapy, and in criminal law-where it is a prosecutor's most potent weapon. In recent years, psychologists from the clinical, personality, developmental, cognitive, and social areas have brought their theories and research methods to bear on an analysis of confession evidence, how it is obtained, and what impact it has on judges, juries, and other people.
... As such, data will be needed to replicate our findings with richer stimulus materials. However, we should note that research on person perception using thin-slices (Ambady et al. 2000) and research on perceptions of guilt (Lassiter et al. 2001) has revealed that increasing the complexity of social stimuli (and thereby, nondiagnostic information) to which observers are exposed often does not appreciably alter target ratings. In a similar vein, we do not as of yet know if the same results will hold when the nondiagnostic information is presented in visual, rather than written, form. ...
Recent research has revealed that increasing nondiagnostic information about victims in rape trial scenarios decreases guilty verdicts. This finding contradicts several existing theoretical positions that predict nondiagnostic information about a target is beneficial to that target. Three experiments are presented to resolve this incongruity. It is hypothesized that greater nondiagnostic victim information can increase use of victim stereotypes. As such, we predicted that increasing nondiagnostic victim information decreases the number of guilty verdicts in trials featuring strongly negative victim stereotypes (e.g., rape trials), but not trials without strongly negative victim stereotypes (e.g., assault trials). In Study 1, nondiagnostic victim information in an assault trial scenario led to more-rather than fewer-guilty verdicts. In Study 2, increasing nondiagnostic victim information led to increased negative stereotyped perceptions in a rape trial scenario but not an assault trial scenario. In Study 3, nondiagnostic information showed no difference on the impact on the perception of male versus female victims of assault. Finally, we demonstrate the mechanisms by which nondiagnostic target information alters trial verdicts.
... In recent years, triggered in large part by DNA exonerations and concomitant discovery of false confessions, there has been discussion and movement in many states toward requiring the full electronic recording of all custodial interviews and interrogations (Drizin & Colgan, 2001;Kassin, 2004;Slobogin, 2003). This debate brings to light important logistical considerations, as suggested by the work of Lassiter and his colleagues on the impact of camera perspective on judges and juries (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001;Lassiter, Geers, Handley, Weiland, & Munhall, 2002). ...
Let me begin with a recent story that already has historic value in the annals of wrongful convictions. This was an infamous case that took place in 1989 in New York City. Known as the ‘Central Park jogger case’, it involved a young woman, an investment banker, who was beaten senseless, raped, and left for dead. It was a heinous crime that horrified the city. The victim's skull had multiple fractures, her eye socket was crushed, and she lost three-quarters of her blood. Defying the odds, she managed to survive, but she was – and, to this day, still is – completely amnesic for the incident (Meili, 2003). Soon thereafter, solely on the basis of police-induced confessions taken within seventy-two hours of the crime, five African- and Hispanic-American boys, 14 to 16 years old, were convicted of the attack and sentenced to prison. At the time, it was easy to understand why detectives aggressively interrogated the boys, some of whom were ‘wilding’ in the park that night (Sullivan, 1992). Yet based on a recent confession volunteered from prison by a convicted serial rapist whose DNA was found in semen at the crime scene, the five boys' convictions were vacated, their confessions apparently false (Kassin, 2002; New York v. Wise, 2002; Saulny, 2002). Four of the five jogger confessions were videotaped and presented to the juries at trial. The tapes – which showed only the confessions, not the precipitating fourteen to thirty hours of interrogation – were highly compelling.
... Jurors ' failure to consider the role of the interrogator in eliciting a confession is exacerbated if they view a videotape of the confession that focuses solely on the suspect ( Lassiter & Irvine, 1986;Lassiter, Slaw, Briggs, & Scanlan, 1992). Jurors are more likely to consider situational factors in their inferences of voluntariness and their verdicts when they watch a videotaped confession that contains both the interrogator and the suspect in the scene ( Lassiter & Geers, 2004;Lassiter, Geers, Handley, Weiland, & Munhall, 2002;Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001). Even experienced legal professionals and law enforcement offers fall prey to the camera-perspective bias ( Lassiter, Diamond, Schmidt, & Elek, 2007). ...
1Role of Social and Behavioral Science in the Law2(UN)Reliability of Eyewitness Identifications3Interrogations and Confessions4Jury Selection5Pretrial Publicity6Expert Evidence7Summary
... There have been real world consequences associated with Kassin and Kiechel's (1996) research. Calls have been made to challenge or regulate the use of false evidence on the basis of their study (Conti, 1999;Kassin & Kiechel, 1996;Lassiter et al., 2001). Experienced practitioners, on the other hand, claim that the use of false evidence is often very useful when trying to solve actual crimes in the real world. ...
To date, few experimental studies have looked at the factors that influence people’s willingness to confess to something they did not do. One widely cited experiment on the topic (i.e., Kassin & Kiechel, 1996) has suggested that false confessions are easy to obtain and that the use of false incriminating evidence increases the likelihood of obtaining one. The present research attempted to replicate Kassin and Kiechel’s (1996) work using a different experimental task. In the present experiment, unlike Kassin and Kiechel’s (1996) study, the participants were completely certain that they were not responsible for what had happened, thereby providing a different context for testing the idea that false incriminating evidence increases the likelihood of obtaining a false confession. The results are discussed with respect to factors that may or may not increase individuals’ willingness to offer a false admission of guilt.
... Consistently, participants who see only the suspect judge the situation as less coercive than those also focused on the interrogator. By directing visual attention toward the accused, the camera can thus lead jurors to underestimate the amount of pressure actually exerted by the "hidden" detective (Lassiter & Irvine, 1986; for a review, see Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001). Under these more balanced circumstances, juries-and judgesmake more informed attributions of voluntariness and guilt when they see not only the final confession but the conditions under which it was elicited (Lassiter, Diamond, Schmidt, & Elek, 2007;Lassiter, Geers, Handley, Weiland, & Munhall, 2002). ...
Inspired by DNA exoneration cases and other wrongful convictions of innocent people who had confessed to crimes they did not commit, and drawing from basic principles of social perception and social influence, a vast body of research has focused on the social psychology of confessions. In particular, this article describes laboratory and field studies on the “Milgramesque” processes of police interviewing an interrogation, the methods by which innocent people are judged deceptive and induced into confession, and the rippling effects of these confessions on judges, juries, lay and expert witnesses, and the truth-seeking process itself. This article concludes with a discussion of social and policy implications—including a call for the mandatory video recording of entire interrogations, blind testing in forensic science labs, and the admissibility of confession experts in court.
... All this should increase the fact-finding accuracy of judges and juries. For the tapes to be complete and balanced, however, entire sessions should be recorded and the camera should adopt a 'neutral' or 'equal focus' perspective that shows both the accused and his or her interrogators (Lassiter et al. 2001). ...
... The suspect's salience contributes to increased perceptions of guilt and voluntariness of his or her statements. In a continuing program of research, attempts to obviate the prejudicial effects of camera perspective in the evaluation of videotaped confessions have proven ineffective (e.g., Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001). ...
... To the present day, this camera perspective (focused entirely on the suspect, providing little, if any, opportunity to observe the interrogators) is typically how confessions and interrogations are videotaped in the United States (Geller, 1992;Kassin, 1997;Lassiter, Ware, Ratcliff, & Irvin, 2009). For more than 2 decades now, Lassiter (2002) and his colleagues (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001) have argued that positioning the camera such that it directs attention exclusively onto suspects could have an unanticipated detrimental influence on fact finders' evaluations of videotaped confessions and interrogations because of, among other things, illusory causation-a well-documented phenomenon in the psychological literature. ...
... To the present day, this camera perspective (focused entirely on the suspect, providing little, if any, opportunity to observe the interrogators) is typically how confessions and interrogations are videotaped in the United States (Geller, 1992;Kassin, 1997;Lassiter, Ware, Ratcliff, & Irvin, 2009). For more than 2 decades now, Lassiter (2002) and his colleagues (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001) have argued that positioning the camera such that it directs attention exclusively onto suspects could have an unanticipated detrimental influence on fact finders' evaluations of videotaped confessions and interrogations because of, among other things, illusory causation-a well-documented phenomenon in the psychological literature. ...
... Despite these limitations, this study presents a first look at implicit racial cues embedded in the legal system and demonstrates evidence for the presence of attentionally biasing cues in the legal system. Since simply being the subject of attention can alter how a suspect is perceived, including the eventual attribution of causality in both mundane and legal contexts [27,28], the present findings are concerning for current judicial practices. Indeed, paired with an overall implicit association between Black and the legal concept of guilty, and White and not guilty [15], these systematic couplings of racial categories and aspects of the criminal justice system raise questions about the racial fairness of presumption of innocence instructions, a foundation of every criminal trial designed to create a fair and just proceeding. ...
Research has shown that crime concepts can activate attentional bias to Black faces. This study investigates the possibility that some legal concepts hold similar implicit racial cues. Presumption of innocence instructions, a core legal principle specifically designed to eliminate bias, may instead serve as an implicit racial cue resulting in attentional bias.
The experiment was conducted in a courtroom with participants seated in the jury box. Participants first watched a video of a federal judge reading jury instructions that contained presumption of innocence instructions, or matched length alternative instructions. Immediately following this video a dot-probe task was administered to assess the priming effect of the jury instructions. Presumption of innocence instructions, but not the alternative instructions, led to significantly faster response times to Black faces when compared with White faces.
These findings suggest that the core principle designed to ensure fairness in the legal system actually primes attention for Black faces, indicating that this supposedly fundamental protection could trigger racial stereotypes.
... The problem is that these confession-inducing techniques may affect innocent as well as guilty suspects. The possibility of false confession in police interrogations containing persuasive and coercing elements has been pointed out numerous times in the scientific literature (Conti, 1999;Gudjonsson, 2003;Huff et al., 1996;Kassin, 1997;Kassin & Kiechel, 1996;Kassin et al., 2003;Lassiter et al., 2001;Leo, 2001;Leo & Ofshe, 1998;Memon et al., 2003;Sear & Williamson, 1999;Victory, 2002;Vrij, 2003;Walker & Starmer, 1999). Obviously, it is close to impossible to know the so-called ''ground truth'' in criminal cases (i.e., whether the suspect is indeed the perpetrator). ...
The interrogation of suspects is considered to be one of the most crucial stages in the investigative process. Cases of miscarriage of justice have led to public outcries for studies on the procedures, effectiveness and ethics of police interrogations. This article provides an overview of such studies of interrogation, and sheds light on two different interrogation techniques informed by a social psychological perspective. First, the effects of interrogation techniques that aim at obtaining confessions are discussed. Second, an overview is provided of techniques that emphasize the importance of obtaining the truth. Finally, in relation to recent findings from the area of psychology and law, the characteristics of a good interrogation are explored.
... For more complete coverage and discussion of the literature on the camera perspective bias in videotaped confessions, the reader is directed toLassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, and Beers (2001),Lassiter (2002),Lassiter and Geers (2004), and Lassiter, Ratcliff, Ware, and Irvin(2006).160 G. Daniel Lassiter et al. ...
Objective. Numerous previous experiments have established the existence of a camera perspective bias in evaluations of videotaped interrogations/confessions: videotapes that make the suspect more visually conspicuous than the interrogator(s) by virtue of focusing the camera on the suspect yield assessments of voluntariness and judgments of guilt that are greater than those found when alternative presentation formats are used. One limitation of this body of research is that all the interrogations/confessions used to date were simulations; therefore, no evidence currently demonstrates that the camera perspective bias importantly generalizes to authentic videotapes recorded by police and depicting actual suspects and interrogators. Two experiments addressed this issue.
Methods. Experiment 1 compared judgments of voluntariness based on viewing two authentic videotaped confessions – one recorded with the camera focused on the suspect, the other with the camera focused equally on the suspect and interrogator – with those based on listening only to the audio or reading only a transcript. Experiment 2 compared judgments of voluntariness and guilt of an originally equal‐focus videotaped confession that was edited to produce suspect‐focus and interrogator‐focus versions.
Results. In Experiment 1, participants judged the videotape version of the confession to be more voluntary than either the audio only or transcript versions, but only for the suspect‐focus videotape. In Experiment 2, participants viewing the suspect‐focus version of the confession (relative to the interrogator‐focus version) judged it to be more voluntary and the suspect more likely to be guilty.
Conclusion. The present research further strengthens the policy implications of the literature on camera perspective bias by providing evidence that the bias manifests with authentic interrogations/confessions as well as with simulations.
... By directing visual attention toward the accused, the camera can lead jurors to underestimate the amount of pressure actually exerted by the ''hidden'' detective (Lassiter & Irvine, 1986;Lassiter, Slaw, Briggs, & Scanlan, 1992). Additional studies have confirmed that people are more attuned to the situational factors that elicit confessions when the interrogator is visible on camera than when the focus is solely on the suspect (Lassiter & Geers, 2004;Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001). Under these neutral or balanced circumstances, juries make more informed attributions of voluntariness and guilt when they see not only the final confession but also the conditions under which it was elicited (Lassiter, Geers, Handley, Weiland, & Munhall, 2002). ...
Recently, in a number of high-profile cases, defendants who were prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced on the basis of false confessions have been exonerated through DNA evidence. As a historical matter, confession has played a prominent role in religion, in psychotherapy, and in criminal law—where it is a prosecutor's most potent weapon. In recent years, psychologists from the clinical, personality, developmental, cognitive, and social areas have brought their theories and research methods to bear on an analysis of confession evidence, how it is obtained, and what impact it has on judges, juries, and other people.
Drawing on individual case studies, archival reports, correlational studies, and laboratory and field experiments, this monograph scrutinizes a sequence of events during which confessions may be obtained from criminal suspects and used as evidence. First, we examine the preinterrogation interview, a process by which police target potential suspects for interrogation by making demeanor-based judgments of whether they are being truthful. Consistent with the literature showing that people are poor lie detectors, research suggests that trained and experienced police investigators are prone to see deception at this stage and to make false-positive errors, disbelieving people who are innocent, with a great deal of confidence.
Second, we examine the Miranda warning and waiver, a process by which police apprise suspects of their constitutional rights to silence and to counsel. This important procedural safeguard is in place to protect the accused, but researchers have identified reasons why it may have little impact. One reason is that some suspects do not have the capacity to understand and apply these rights. Another is that police have developed methods of obtaining waivers. Indeed, innocent people in particular tend to waive their rights, naively believing that they have nothing to fear or hide and that their innocence will set them free.
Third, we examine the modern police interrogation, a guilt-presumptive process of social influence during which trained police use strong, psychologically oriented techniques involving isolation, confrontation, and minimization of blame to elicit confessions. Fourth, we examine the confession itself, discussing theoretical perspectives and research on why people confess during interrogation. In particular, we focus on the problem of false confessions and their corrupting influence in cases of wrongful convictions. We distinguish among voluntary, compliant, and internalized false confessions. We describe personal risk factors for susceptibility to false confessions, such as dispositional tendencies toward compliance and suggestibility, youth, mental retardation, and psychopathology. We then examine situational factors related to the processes of interrogation and show that three common interrogation tactics—isolation; the presentation of false incriminating evidence; and minimization, which implies leniency will follow—can substantially increase the risk that ordinary people will confess to crimes they did not commit, sometimes internalizing the belief in their own culpability.
Fifth, we examine the consequences of confession evidence as evaluated by police and prosecutors, followed by judges and juries in court. Research shows that confession evidence is inherently prejudicial, that juries are influenced by confessions despite evidence of coercion and despite a lack of corroboration, and that the assumption that “I'd know a false confession if I saw one” is an unsubstantiated myth. Finally, we address the role of psychologists as expert witnesses and suggest a number of possible safeguards. In particular, we argue that there is a need to reform interrogation practices that increase the risk of false confessions and recommend a policy of mandatory videotaping of all interviews and interrogations.
... Record the interrogation Experts have long made the case that recording the entire interrogation so that the focus is shared between the police officer and suspect is of paramount importance (e.g.Lassiter & Geers, 2004;Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001;Kassin et al., 2009). Indeed, Lassiter and his colleagues (e.g.Lassiter & Geers, 2004) have argued that filming the interrogator at all times would give judges and jurors the best opportunity to understand the interrogation from the suspects' point of view. ...
Canada's legal system recognizes that police interrogation procedures may contribute to false confessions and has provided safeguards designed to protect the rights of the accused and reduce the likelihood of these errors. Although it is difficult to determine how often false confessions occur, it is worth considering the extent to which Canadian legal protections are likely to be effective and the degree to which they address the relevant psychological issues that might increase the likelihood of a false confession. The purpose of this paper is to summarize some recent Canadian legal cases relevant to confession evidence (e.g. R. v. L.T.H., 2008; R. v. Mentuck, 2000; R. v. Oickle, 2000; R. v. Spencer, 2007) and to analyze Canadian law and police practice in the context of the scientific evidence available and in comparison to the practice of other jurisdictions. We also discuss directions for future research, and the ways in which psychological research could inform legal process and policy in the future.
... Despite all of the positives associated with the videotaping of in-custody interrogations, it is important for both advocates of this practice and those directly responsible for implementing it to be aware of its limitations and potential drawbacks. For example, more than two decades of research has demonstrated the existence of a camera perspective bias in videotaped interrogations and confessions (Landström, Roos af Hjelmsäter, & Granhag, 2007;Lassiter & Geers, 2004;Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001;Lassiter, Ratcliff, Ware, & Irvin, 2006;Lassiter, Ware, Lindberg, & Ratcliff, 2010). That is, videotapes in which the camera directs observers' visual attention onto suspects (as opposed to interrogators or both suspects and interrogators) tend to produce more prejudicial evaluations of suspects: Their statements are assessed as more voluntary, they are more likely to be judged guilty, and they receive more severe sentence recommendations. ...
Evaluations of videotaped criminal confessions can be influenced by the camera perspective taken during recording. Interrogations and confessions recorded with the camera directing observers' visual attention onto the suspect lead to biased judgments of the suspect. Although a camera perspective that directs visual attention onto the suspect and interrogator equally appears to promote unbiased judgments, investigations to date have relied on videotapes that depict only Caucasian suspects and interrogators. We examined the possibility that even equal-focus videotapes may become problematic when the suspect is a minority (e.g., Chinese American or African American) and the interrogator is Caucasian. That is, to the extent that Caucasian observers are inclined to direct more of their attention onto minorities, an effect documented previously, we expected biased judgments of the suspect to also occur in equal-focus videotapes. Three experiments provided evidence of this racial salience bias. Implications are discussed, including a practical way of avoiding the bias. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... To the present day, this camera perspective (focused entirely on the suspect, providing little, if any, opportunity to observe the interrogators) is typically how confessions and interrogations are videotaped in the United States (Geller, 1992;Kassin, 1997;Lassiter, Ware, Ratcliff, & Irvin, 2009). For more than 2 decades now, Lassiter (2002) and his colleagues (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001) have argued that positioning the camera such that it directs attention exclusively onto suspects could have an unanticipated detrimental influence on fact finders' evaluations of videotaped confessions and interrogations because of, among other things, illusory causation-a well-documented phenomenon in the psychological literature. ...
This chapter draws on the psychological literature to emphasize some important issues that would be prudent for lawmakers to keep in mind in their pursuit of a sound videotaping policy. Such a scientifically based policy would not only require that custodial interrogations be videotaped in their entirety but would also provide guidance on how interrogations should be videotaped to best protect the innocent from the possibility of wrongful conviction. Moreover, we argue in this chapter—again from the standpoint of relevant science—that even under the best of circumstances, evaluations of defendants' videotaped statements obtained during a typical police interrogation conducted in the United States are subject to the same biases that often undermine the quality of judgments of in vivo interactions between people (e.g., the fundamental attribution error; Ross, 1977). Consequently, the ultimate success of the videotaping reform will only be as good as fact finders' decision-making processes. It is not the point of this chapter to disparage the videotaping movement; rather, the hope is to further its success by identifying potential unintended consequences and offering recommendations, sooner as opposed to later, for avoiding them (cf. Lassiter & Dudley, 1991). This chapter briefly reviews some of the research that initially established the existence of what is now known as the camera perspective bias (Lassiter, 2002). It then turns to a more detailed presentation of the most recent findings that provide the strongest evidence to date that policymakers should heed the scientific data to ensure that the videotaping reform advances, rather than impedes, the cause of justice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The jury is often celebrated as an important symbol of American democracy. Yet much has changed since 1791 when the Sixth Amendment guaranteed all citizens the right to a jury trial in criminal prosecutions. Psychological and legal scholars have empirically evaluated many claims about the strengths and limitations of the jury system. Now, scientific attention is focusing on new challenges that contemporary juries face. The authors of the chapters in this volume consider myriad legal issues that arise when jurors decide criminal cases while reviewing cutting-edge psychological research and ways that this research can improve the experience and performance of the modern criminal jury. The first part of this book reviews recent societal shifts in attitudes and their potential impact on the demographic and ideological composition of the criminal jury and, in turn, the jury’s ability to make fair and just decisions. The second part of the book considers how recent technological advances have generated new sources of influence on jurors’ evaluations of evidence and decision-making. The final part of the book examines how emotions impact the jury decision-making process and individual citizens’ experiences of serving as jurors. Each of these sets of issues is relevant to understanding the structure, functioning, and performance of today’s juries. This volume offers a unique and broad view of criminal juries, drawing attention to a wide range of issues that impact jurors’ decision-making in the 21st century and, thus, are in need of theoretical, scientific, and legal attention.
Judges and jurists frequently read police-recorded video as arhetorical. It is not. Footage recorded from the perspective of an officer favors police. Drawing on both Burke’s theory of identification and film studies, I consider how footage filmed from an officer’s perspective functions as a nonverbal constitutive rhetoric. In an analysis of Harris v. Scott (2007), I demonstrate how police-recorded video encourages viewers to dissolve the space between themselves and the police, inviting audiences to characterize both police and themselves as passive, impartial, and objective viewers of an recorded event. When successful as constitutive rhetoric, footage from police-recorded video makes jurors and judges more suspectable to arguments that characterize police as passive observers in an event.
The use of body-worn cameras (BWCs) by police organizations has increased rapidly in recent years. As a result, the use of BWC footage by mass media has also increased. While such video images can help viewers better understand complex police interventions, there are few studies of the extent to which BWC footage influences audience opinions and interpretations of police work. This article investigates the degree to which news reports of a police use-of-force event are influenced by two potential sources of cognitive bias: camera perspective and the way information about the event is framed. In a study using a three (cellphone, closed-circuit camera, and BWC perspective) by two (neutral and negative frame) experimental design, a total of 634 participants viewed and evaluated a news report of a police use-of-force event. Participant perceptions showed the influence of a BWC perspective bias, but no framing effect was found. Participants who watched the BWC footage were more likely to see the intervention as questionable or blameworthy and to believe that officers had no reasonable grounds for intervening. Results also suggest that the BWC perspective bias can be exacerbated or mitigated by the way information is presented in a news report.
Forensic animation is the use of digital animation technologies to recreate or simulate an event for use as probative evidence in a court proceeding. Acceptance by courts of this technology varies by jurisdiction. Some courts disallow its use because of the technology's prejudicial impact when weighed against the probative value and perceived tendency to bias jurors; such courts typically do not consider the relevant legal psychology research. This article examines the body of scientific evidence with respect to value of the technology, with a focus on criminal proceedings. It concludes with a policy recommendation for courts to employ in light of these considerations.
Forensic animation is the use of digital animation technologies to recreate or simulate an event for use as probative evidence in a court proceeding. Acceptance by courts of this technology varies by jurisdiction. Some courts disallow its use because of the technology's prejudicial impact when weighed against the probative value and perceived tendency to bias jurors; such courts typically do not consider the relevant legal psychology research. This article examines the body of scientific evidence with respect to value of the technology, with a focus on criminal proceedings. It concludes with a policy recommendation for courts to employ in light of these considerations.
Despite universal aspirations to hold all people equal before the law and guarantee a fair trial to defendants regardless of their race, religion, gender, nationality, or sexual orientation, disparity continues to pervade the justice system. People who belong to some social groups are particularly likely to receive harsher legal outcomes than others. The justice system attempts to remedy such inter-group bias by collecting and considering evidence that speaks to the ‘objective’ truth of an event, some of the most potent forms of which include pictorial images and video footage. While such visual evidence is itself considered objective, it can perhaps counter-intuitively foster bias in court. We review research and provide original data asserting that bias in legal judgment persists despite the inclusion of visual evidence partly because decision-makers’ perceptions of visual evidence may be swayed by subjective factors. Specifically, social group membership engenders bias in verdicts and punishment decisions because it directs the way that people visually attend to evidence. To account more fully for variability in legal decisions, we argue that social group membership must be investigated concurrently with its impact on the encoding and processing of visual information. This chapter synthesizes contemporary research on visual attention and contextualizes it within the evaluation of legal evidence. We draw upon our own work and that of others’ who have used eye-tracking and other techniques to measure or manipulate overt visual attention to evidence. We argue that the consideration of visual attention can assist in predicting when and how social group membership biases legal decisionmaking, and we speculate about the underlying psychological mechanisms responsible. Finally, we propose ways in which visual attention can be utilized to mitigate biases in legal decision-making.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that recent video-recorded police-citizen encounters have undermined police legitimacy and fueled civil unrest across the United States. Drawing from the process-based model of policing, social cognitive theory, and past research on media effects, we assess the influence of viewing cell phone videos of police-citizen encounters on perceptions of law enforcement. Using quasi-experimental methods and video footage of an actual police-citizen encounter captured on cell phones, the effects of viewing these videos are assessed using a series of repeated measure ANOVAs. Results indicate that viewing cell phone videos of police-citizen encounters significantly impacts perceptions of law enforcement, though little evidence of differing effects based on point-of-view, number of video exposures, or ordering of video exposures was found. The process-based model of policing should consider further incorporating the contributions of technology to provide a more holistic account of the factors influencing perceptions of police.
Contradicting the commonsense belief that “I'd never confess to a crime I did not commit”, false confessions are a contributing factor in roughly one quarter of all post-conviction DNA exonerations. Voluntary, compliant, and internalized false confessions are distinguished and a sequence of three processes is articulated as responsible for these confessions and the adverse legal consequences that follow. First, police often target innocent people for interrogation on the basis of confident but erroneous judgments of truth and deception made in a preinterrogation interview. Second, innocent people sometimes confess during interrogation as a result of certain dispositional vulnerabilities (such as compliant and suggestible personalities, mental illness and retardation, adolescence, and the phenomenology of innocence) and/or the use of certain coercive tactics (prolonged isolation, the false evidence ploy, and minimization). Third, people cannot accurately distinguish between true and false confessions, and jurors fail to discount even those confessions they see as coerced. As a matter of policy, it is suggested that police should videotape entire interrogations using a neutral, “equal focus” camera perspective and that psychological experts can help to educate judges and juries about the various risk factors.
Objectives
Footage from body-worn cameras (BWCs) is sometimes used to assess the quality of police interventions. This study investigates whether there is a “body-worn camera perspective bias,” in which the point of view provided by the footage influences perception of an intervention. Methods
Participants with different backgrounds (undergraduate students and police candidates) were randomly allocated to a group that looked at one of two videos showing a fictional police intervention during which lethal force was used against a subject; both videos showed exactly the same intervention, but one had been filmed with a BWC and the other with a surveillance camera installed in a top corner of the room. Participants were then asked to rate the appropriateness of the intervention. ResultsNo camera perspective bias was found among university respondents. However a significant camera perspective bias was found among police candidates: respondents’ opinions on the appropriateness of the intervention were significantly different when the film was from the body-worn camera than when it was seen from the surveillance camera. This result may be explained by the finding that viewers of the BWC footage reported that the subject was further from the officer. Conclusions
Results suggest that the more training individuals have in analyzing police interventions, the more affected they will be by the camera perspective in these interventions. One implication of these results is that the perspective of people assigned and trained to evaluate the appropriateness of an intervention (e.g., members of a committee monitoring police misconduct) might be biased if only video footage from a BWC is presented.
In this study we offer a unique test of structural shifts in the influence of poverty and income inequality on crime rates. Using U.S. county level data drawn from the 1990 and 2000 centennial censuses and the FBI Uniform Crime Reports we uncover structural differences in the determinants of crime across rural and urban counties as well as differences across violent and property crimes. We find that over time there have been significant structural shifts in the influence of traditional socioeconomic predictors of crime. In addition, we find that income inequality outperforms poverty measures in terms of predicting changes in crime rates.
Many of the wrongful convictions that have been brought to light over the last decade have their roots in the interrogation phase of criminal investigations where coerced or false confessions are sometimes extracted from detained crime suspects. A “simple” solution has been advanced to correct this particular problem: video record all custodial interrogations. Certainly, such a procedural modification has the potential to improve the administration of justice; however, prudence calls for some consideration of its possible pitfalls. Toward that end, we briefly review some relevant psychological science that points to significant limitations inherent in the video-recording practice. Some limitations can be offset with proper implementation of the practice, and in these instances we provide research-based recommendations for achieving it. Other drawbacks, however, cannot be as easily rectified, and in these cases criminal justice practitioners and mental health professionals should heed the old adage, “forewarned is forearmed,” when making use of video-recorded interrogations.
The preceding chapters in this volume have focused primarily on how interrogations are conducted and have shed light on which of the standard investigative approaches used by police are most problematic with regard to producing coerced and/or false confessions. In this chapter we move from the interrogation room to the courtroom to consider the question of how confession evidence is evaluated once it is introduced at trial. If trial fact finders (judges and jurors) are in fact good at identifying and discounting problematic confessions—that is, ones that are indeed coerced or false—then the damage caused by errors made in the earlier stages of the criminal-justice process may be contained to some degree. We will review the empirical evidence that speaks to this issue. In addition, we will examine the related question of how evaluations of confession evidence are affected by the format in which it is presented. This issue of presentation format is an especially timely one as many states are currently grappling with how best to capture and later present what transpires during interrogations so as to minimize the possibility of unreliable confessions exerting any influence on trial verdicts.
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the type of exploratory strategy and level of prior knowledge on middle school students’ performance and motivation in learning chemical formulas via a 3D role-playing game (RPG). Two types of exploratory strategies—RPG exploratory with worked-example and RPG exploratory without worked-example—and two levels of prior knowledge—high prior knowledge and low prior knowledge—were examined in the study. The 5E Instructional Model was employed as a learning framework in the RPG game design of The Alchemist’s Fort. One hundred and fifteen eighth-grade students from a Taiwanese school voluntarily participated in the 3-week experiment. The results indicate that (1) significant worked-example effect was revealed on knowledge comprehension and marginal worked-example effect occurred on knowledge application; (2) regardless of the type of exploratory strategy employed, learners showed mild positive motivation toward learning chemistry via a 3D RPG game; (3) higher prior-knowledge learners outperformed their lower prior-knowledge peers on performance measures; and (4) high prior-knowledge learners showed a higher degree of motivation in self-efficacy and science learning value than did the low prior-knowledge learners; however, lower prior-knowledge learners revealed higher learning environment stimulation than did their high prior-knowledge peers.
Much literature on group brainstorming has found it to be less effective than individual brainstorming. However, a cognitive perspective suggests that group brainstorming could be an effective technique for generating creative ideas. Computer simulations of an associative memory model of idea generation in groups suggest that groups have the potential to generate ideas that individuals brainstorming alone are less likely to generate. Exchanging ideas by means of writing or computers, alternating solitary and group brainstorming, and using heterogeneous groups appear to be useful approaches for enhancing group brainstorming.
A large body of evidence indicates that people attribute unwarranted causality (influence) to a stimulus simply because it is more noticeable or salient than other available stimuli. This article reviews recent research demonstrating that this illusory–causation phenomenon can produce serious prejudicial effects with regard to how people evaluate certain types of legal evidence. Specifically, evaluations of videotaped confessions can be significantly altered by presumably inconsequential changes in the camera perspective taken when the confessions are initially recorded. Videotaped confessions recorded with the camera focused on the suspect—compared with videotapes from other camera points of view (e.g., focused equally on the suspect and interrogator) or with more traditional presentation formats (i.e., transcripts and audiotapes)—lead mock jurors to judge that the confessions were more voluntary and, most important, that the suspects are more likely to be guilty. Because actual criminal interrogations are customarily videotaped with the camera lens zeroed in on the suspect, these findings are of considerable practical significance.
Crime suspects in the USA are typically questioned in a two-step process aimed, first, at behavioural lie detection during a pre-interrogation interview, followed by the elicitation of a confession during the interrogation itself (in Great Britain, the practice of investigative interviewing does not make this sharp distinction). Research conducted on the first step shows that police investigators often target innocent people for interrogation because of erroneous but confident judgments of deception. Research on the second step shows that innocent people are sometimes induced to confess to crimes they did not commit as a function of certain dispositional vulnerabilities or the use of overly persuasive interrogation tactics. Citing recent studies, this paper proposes that laboratory paradigms be used to help build more diagnostic models of interrogation. Substantively, we suggest that the British PEACE approach to investigative interviewing may provide a potentially effective alternative to the classic American interrogation. As a matter of policy, we suggest that the videotaping of entire interrogations from a balanced camera perspective is necessary to improve the fact finding accuracy of judges and juries who must evaluate confession evidence in court.
A scholarly edited book about the emerging interface of psychology and the law.
Proposes a distinction between 2 types of applied eyewitness-testimony research: System-variable (SV) research investigates varibles that are manipulable in actual criminal cases (e.g., the structure of a lineup) and, thus, has the potential for reducing the inaccuracies of eyewitnesses; estimator-variable (EV) research, however, investigates variables that cannot be controlled in actual criminal cases (e.g., characteristics of the witness) and, thus, can only be used in the courtroom to augment or discount the credibility of eyewitnesses. SVs and EVs are contrasted with respect to their relative potential for positive contribution to criminal justice, and it is concluded that SV research may prove more fruitful than EV research. It is also argued that several methodological biases may be exacerbating the rate of misidentifications in staged-crime paradigms. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Presenting criminal confessions on videotape is increasingly commonplace, but investigations of the impact of this format on trial decision-makers' judgments are relatively sparse. Prior studies have found that camera perspective affects observers' judgments of the voluntary status of a videotaped confession. More specifically, when the camera is focused only on the confessor, as opposed to focused on both the confessor and interrogator equally, observers judge the confession to be more voluntary. The purpose of the present study was to determine if camera perspective also influences the perceived veracity or believability of a videotaped confession. Participants viewed either a confessor-focus or equal-focus videotaped confession and subsequently provided both ratings of the voluntariness and credibility of the confessor's statements. The biasing effect of camera perspective on voluntariness judgments was replicated once again. Judgments of the confessor's credibility, however, were unaffected by camera perspective. We conclude that previous demonstrations of the camera perspective bias in videotaped confessions were not simply the result of changes in observers' assessments of the confessor's credibility.
Conducted 2 analyses from a study by D. Newtson et al (1976) of the relation between the segmentation of 7 ongoing behavior sequences into their component actions and the movement in those sequences. The 1st analysis confirmed that action-unit boundaries consist of stimulus points depicting distinctive changes relative to the previously used action-unit boundary, rather than consisting of distinctive, action-defining states. The 2nd analysis tested more rigorously the notion that distinctive changes form the objective basis of behavior units by examining the transitions between stimulus points within action units and transitions to and from action-unit boundaries; results of this analysis also support a distinctive-change interpretation. Results of previous studies of action perception are reviewed, and a preliminary hypothesis as to the nature of behavior perception processes is presented and discussed. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Defines the self-concept as a set of cognitive structures (self-schemas) that provide for individual expertise in particular social domains. Two studies were conducted with 62 male undergraduates with self-reported masculinity schemas (schematics) and 58 male undergraduates without schemas (aschematics) to examine the information-processing consequences of this expertise for the perception of others. Ss viewed a film and were required to unitize the film into segments, describe the actor, and recall the actor's behavior. Findings show that, in the unitizing task, schematics consistently divided a schema-relevant film about another person into larger units than did aschematics. In reconstructing the film sequence, schematics made more global conjectures about the personality and motivation of the target individual, implying an instance of expert performance, in which the self-schema provided the schematics with an interpretive framework for organizing the schema-relevant behavior of others. When given instructions to attend to the details of behavior, schematics made smaller units, whereas the performance of the aschematics did not vary. The role of the self-concept in the perception of others is seen to vary systematically with whether self or other is the cognitive reference point and the conditions associated with each are delineated. (68 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Experiments exploring the effects of group discussion on attitudes, jury decisions, ethical decisions, judgments, person perceptions, negotiations, and risk taking (other than the choice-dilemmas task) are generally consistent with a "group polarization" hypothesis, derived from the risky-shift literature. Recent attempts to explain the phenomenon fall mostly into 1 of 3 theoretical approaches: (a) group decision rules, especially majority rule (which is contradicted by available data); (b) interpersonal comparisons (for which there is mixed support); and (c) informational influence (for which there is strong support). A conceptual scheme is presented which integrates the latter 2 viewpoints and suggests how attitudes develop in a social context. (41/2 p ref)
An experiment demonstrated that false incriminating evidence can lead people to accept guilt for a crime they did not commit Subjects in a fast- or slow-paced reaction time task were accused of damaging a computer by pressing the wrong key All were truly innocent and initially denied the charge A confederate then said she saw the subject hit the key or did not see the subject hit the key Compared with subjects in the slow-pacelno-witness group, those in the fast-pace/witness group were more likely to sign a confession, internalize guilt for the event, and confabulate details in memory consistent with that belief Both legal and conceptual implications are discussed
Previous research has suggested that message argument scrutiny is enhanced by moderate levels of message repetition, whereas tedium develops at high levels of message repetition. Such a conceptualization implies that responses to messages containing strong versus weak arguments should be affected differently by a moderate level of message repetition. This prediction was tested in a study of 102 undergraduates assigned randomly to the cells of a 2 (Argument Quality: Strong vs. Weak) x 2 (Message Repetition: One vs. Three) between-subjects factorial design. Analyses revealed the predicted interaction on the measure of postcommunication attitudes, providing convergent evidence that moderate levels of message repetition can increase or decrease persuasion by enhancing argument scrutiny.
Infrequent positive (E+) and negative (E—) words were used as stimuli in exposure experiments. Increased exposure led E+ words to become more positive and E— words to become more negative. Exposure also led the summed evaluations of the associations to E+ and E— words to become, respectively, more positive and more negative. These parallel findings were predicted from an attitude formation process that was based on Fishbein's attitude model. Explanations of response competition, mental sets, attitude conditioning, demand characteristics, subject hypotheses, and relative rating strategies were also tested. None of these explanations could account for the exposure effects. It was concluded that mere exposure effects are not necessarily artifacts and that the attitude formation process can potentially reconcile inconsistent findings in the literature. Zajonc (1968) marshaled an impressive array of correlational and experimental evidence to support the hypothesis that the mere exposure of a stimulus is a sufficient condition to enhance an individual's evaluation of it. The frequency-positive affect relationship has since been replicated in different settings (Zajonc & Rajecki, 1969), with different stimuli (Saegart, Swap, & Zajonc, 1973), and different subject populations (Heingartner & Hall, 1974). Harrison (1968) proposed a response competition hypothesis to explain Zajonc's (1968) findings. This explanation assumes that a novel stimulus initially arouses negative affect because many response tendencies toward the stimulus compete to identify the stimulus as a particular object or entity. Repeated stimu
This volume, a sequel to The Psychology of Interrogations, Confessions and Testimony which is widely acclaimed by both scientists and practitioners, brings the field completely up-to-date and focuses in particular on aspects of vulnerability, confabulation and false confessions. The is an unrivalled integration of scientific knowledge of the psychological processes and research relating to interrogation, with the practical investigative and legal issues that bear upon obtaining, and using in court, evidence from interrogations of suspects. Accessible style which will appeal to academics, students and practitioners. Authoritative integration of theory, research, practical implications and vivid case illustration. Coverage of topical issues like confabulation, false memory, and false confessions. Part of the Wiley Series in The Psychology of Crime, Policing and Law.
Stimuli that engulf attention often have a disproportionately large impact on the judgment process, even when logically irrelevant. The present 3 studies, with a total of 279 undergraduates, examined the boundary conditions of such salience effects in a scenario where Ss observed a dyadic conversation in which the visual prominence of 1 of the 2 participants was manipulated. Two hypotheses were examined: (a) Salience effects are dependent on quantity of information encoded and disappear at low levels of attention, and (b) salience effects will disappear if higher involvement in the situation serves to heighten and focus attention on more relevant cues. Neither hypothesis was supported. Rather, salience effects were found (a) when the perceiver was distracted, (b) whether the perceiver's impressions were assessed immediately or after a delay, (c) when the conversation had high interest value, (d) regardless of the perceiver's cognitive tuning set, and (e) when the perceiver was involved in the discussion. It is concluded that salience effects are highly generalizable and that they have a significant impact on both trivial and important social judgments. It is suggested that salience effects are not customarily under the control of the social perceiver, but may be automatic. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Conducted 2 studies of the impact of salience and informational factors on attribution and memory, with a total of 191 undergraduates and graduate students. In Exp I, manipulations of the amount of thought Ss gave to their attributions and of a delay before responding to attribution questions did not diminish the effect of salience on attribution; in fact, the delay increased the effect. In Exp II, recall of the stimulus material was shown to be influenced by salience and by covariation information (consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency) and to be related to attributions. These findings and theory and data from the literature on comprehension and representation of linguistic material in memory are used to argue that salience is not simply a process by which people make attributions without giving much thought to them. Instead, salience effects reflect the close relationships among the processes of comprehension, remembering, and attribution, and the fact that attributional processing can take place at the time of the encoding and storage of information, as well as at the time of its retrieval from memory. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
This chapter discusses the social psychologists study “top of the head” phenomena in their experimental investigations. Attention within the social environment is selective. It is drawn to particular features of the environment either as a function of qualities intrinsic to those features (such as light or movement) or as a function of the perceiver's own dispositions and temporary need states. These conditions are outlined in the chapter. As a result of differential attention to particular features, information about those features is more available to the perceiver. Relative to the quantity of information retained about other features, more is retained about the salient features. When the salient person is the self, the same effects occur, and the individual is also found to show more consistency in attitudes and behaviors. These processes may occur primarily in situations which are redundant, unsurprising, uninvolving, and unarousing. They seem to occur automatically and substantially without awareness, and as such, they differ qualitatively from the intentional, conscious, controlled kind of search which characterizes all the behavior.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
This chapter examines the familiarity-leads-to-liking hypothesis, with specific reference to developments since the time it was formalized and revitalized by Zajonc in 1965. Zajonc suggested that the function best describing the relationship between exposure and liking takes the form of a positive, decelerating curve, with attitude enhancement of a function of the logarithm of the exposure frequency. “Mere exposure” refers to conditions that make the stimulus accessible to the organism's perception. The chapter begins with a consideration of studies that have related assessed or varied familiarity to affective reactions focusing on the conditions suspected of limiting the exposure effect or causing contrasting effects. The conditions under which different results prevail are identified to consider major interpretations. A good deal of research in the past has demonstrated that repeated exposures to some stimulus lead to a liking for it under a wide range of conditions. The effect has been found when exposures have been reduced to a fraction of a second, rendered unrecognizable, or increased to ten times the number used in Zajonc's initial experiments. The effect has been extended into the realm of interpersonal attraction, and considerable new data has been accrued concerning the relationship between familiarity and aesthetic preference.
Findings on the direct perception of action in the behavior stream are reviewed in light of Asch's (1952) hypothesis that actions are gestalten in the behavior stream. Five analyses of the surface structure of seven action sequences and four interactions are reported. Results confirm that the surface structure of behavior, both in actions and interactions, consists of wave-like structures, and that interaction consists of the maintenance of a constant phase relation between the behaviors of the participants.
• At most of our American Colleges there are Clubs formed by the students devoted to particular branches of learning; and these clubs have the laudable custom of inviting once or twice a year some maturer scholar to address them, the occasion often being made a public one. I have from time to time accepted such invitations, and afterwards had my discourse printed in one or other of the Reviews. It has seemed to me that these addresses might now be worthy of collection in a volume, as they shed explanatory light upon each other, and taken together express a tolerably definite philosophic attitude in a very untechnical way. Were I obliged to give a short name to the attitude in question, I should call it that of radical empiricism, in spite of the fact that such brief nicknames are nowhere more misleading than in philosophy. I say 'empiricism,' because it is contented to regard its most assured conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification in the course of future experience; and I say 'radical,' because it treats the doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis, and, unlike so much of the half-way empiricism that is current under the name of positivism or agnosticism or scientific naturalism, it does not dogmatically affirm monism as something with which all experience has got to square. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
• At most of our American Colleges there are Clubs formed by the students devoted to particular branches of learning; and these clubs have the laudable custom of inviting once or twice a year some maturer scholar to address them, the occasion often being made a public one. I have from time to time accepted such invitations, and afterwards had my discourse printed in one or other of the Reviews. It has seemed to me that these addresses might now be worthy of collection in a volume, as they shed explanatory light upon each other, and taken together express a tolerably definite philosophic attitude in a very untechnical way. Were I obliged to give a short name to the attitude in question, I should call it that of radical empiricism, in spite of the fact that such brief nicknames are nowhere more misleading than in philosophy. I say 'empiricism,' because it is contented to regard its most assured conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification in the course of future experience; and I say 'radical,' because it treats the doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis, and, unlike so much of the half-way empiricism that is current under the name of positivism or agnosticism or scientific naturalism, it does not dogmatically affirm monism as something with which all experience has got to square. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Basic research can contribute to society in 2 ways: by generating solutions to already existing problems (its a posteriori value) and by identifying potential problems that may be hidden or developing (its a priori value). The generally overlooked a priori value of basic research is illustrated by tracing how important developments in attribution theory and research point to a potential bias in the use of videotaped confessions as evidence in courts of law. The implications of a seemingly growing trend toward requiring an applied focus in psychological science for the long-term maintenance of the a priori value of basic research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Explored the tendency for people observing a social interaction to perceive a given interactant as increasingly influential or causal as he or she becomes more visually salient. In a situation in which one interactant is more influential than another, it was expected that greater salience would increase the estimated causality of the high-influence interactant but would decrease the estimated causality of the low-influence interactant. It was also anticipated that people inclined to process information in a thorough manner would be unaffected by differential salience. Results from 408 undergraduates revealed the typical salience effect pattern, regardless of whether the observed interactant was highly influential or not and whether the observer was high or low in need for cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Previous research has demonstrated that a finer level of behavior perception is associated with both greater liking for observed others and better memory for their behavior. The present two studies investigated whether the effect of variation in behavior perception on affect is mediated by its effect on memory. In Study 1 subjects were instructed to segment an actor's behavior into either fine or gross units of action. In addition, half of the subjects were instructed to count backward from 500 out loud while unitizing the behavior. Liking for the actor and memory for her behavior were subsequently assessed. The unitization instructions influenced both subjects' liking for the actor and their memory for her behavior; that is, consistent with earlier studies fine-unit subjects reacted more positively to the actor (particularly as measured by behavior) and remembered more of her actions than did gross-unit subjects. The counting manipulation also influenced memory (i.e., reduced it), but had no effect on the liking measures. This pattern of data suggests that memory does not mediate the behavior perception-affect link. Additional support for this conclusion was provided in Study 2 where a path analysis indicated only a direct (nonmediated) effect of level of unitization on liking. These results are discussed in terms of Berlyne's (1966) uncertainty reduction hypothesis and Hastie and Park's (1986) distinction between memory-based and on-line judgments. Finally, various factors likely to influence the behavior perception-affect relationship are considered.
The present study focuses on group processes in simulated jury decisions about complex issues such as those typically faced by trial juries. Employing Davis' Social Decision Scheme theory, it was determined that simulated juries reach a final decision by an equalitarian process in which individuals as well as specific points of view are fairly represented. Considering the present data and that collected by Simon, this account of juridical process was found to be accurate for different kinds of cases, juries of varying size, and cases with dichotomous or polytomous choice alternatives. The adequacy of equalitarian models in accounting for judicial decision processes implies that various extralegal factors-which have previously been identified as contaminants of individual judgment-may be less important for jury decision making than might be assumed from individualistic studies.
Group-induced shift effects observed on other response dimensions were extended to a simulated jury setting. Subjects first responded to eight hypothetical traffic cases which varied in the implication of guilt (high or low), then discussed half of these cases (two high guilt and two low guilt) in small groups, and finally responded again to all eight cases. As predicted, the simulated jury deliberations polarized the mean judgment of discussed cases. After discussing low guilt cases, subjects were, on the average, more extreme in their judgments of innocence and more lenient in recommended punishment, and after discussing high guilt cases shifted toward harsher judgments of guilt and punishment. These effects were not observed for cases which were not discussed.
Thirty-five subjects segmented one of two videotapes of an actor methodically assembling 20 five-page questionnaires. In one sequence, the completion of each questionnaire resulted in a highly visible change in the stimulus fields: The top page of the stack changed from black to white or from white to black with the completion of each questionnaire. In a second sequence the action was identical, but the changing feature was concealed from view. Results disclosed that subjects viewing the tape with the visible change segmented the action on the basis of that change. Subjects viewing the same action without the visible change segmented the behavior into its fine-unit components, despite the fact that the higher-level organization in the behavior was readily understood.
Previous research has demonstrated that salient information is overrepresented in causal attributions. Two experiments were conducted to investigate potential mediators for this effect and to make a case for the use of structural models in explanations of process. Two mediators were considered: enhanced visual recall of salient stimuli and exaggerated schema-relevant recall of salient stimuli. Although analyses of variance supported the visual recall model, structural analyses demonstrated its implausibility. Analyses of variance and structural models revealed that schema-relevant recall, that is, information seen as representative of causal influence, is a plausible mediator; this was particularly true of relevant visual information. Results suggest that salience effects (S. E. Taylor & S. T. Fiske in L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 11). New York: Academic Press, 1978) are due to: (a) the attentional advantage of inherently salient visual events and (b) the influence of stored visual and nonvisual schema-relevant information on causal judgments.
An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that actors' and observers' causal attributions are a function of their focus of attention. In the presence of observer-subjects, actor-subjects made a choice among several art works in a supposed decision-making study. The experiment was a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design with the factors (1) source of attribution (actors, observers); (2) camera (actor videotaped, actor not videotaped); and (3) situational stability (stable, dynamic environment). As predicted by the focus of attention-causal attribution notion, it was found that actors attributed more causality to the situation than observers under normal circumstances, when the camera was not operative, but that videotaping the actor reversed the usual actor-observer pattern such that actors attributed less causality to the situation than did observers. Further, when the environment was stable, actors attributed more causality to the situation in the no camera condition than in the camera condition, while observers attributed less to the situation in the no camera conditions than in the camera conditions. Additionally, both actors and observers attributed more causality to the situation when the environment was dynamic than when the environment was stable.
The use of laboratory experiments involving simulated jurors has proven to be a popular means for examining the effects of various variables on juror decision making. In the vast majority of these studies, college students have been used in the roles as simulated jurors. Yet, one question facing studies employing students as jurors remains: Can the results of such studies be generalized to nonstudents in similar roles? Using 80 randomly selected undergraduate students and 80 randomly selected citizens, the present study tested the null hypothesis that college students do not differ from the general population in terms of the length of sentence they would impose upon an individual charged with a crime. Results showed that students were significantly (p < .01) more lenient in their sentences than were nonstudents.
Recent claims have been made that police have obtained "false" confessions from innocent persons and that these false confessions have even led to the conviction of innocent persons. This article scrutinizes these claims, examining in detail a number of alleged false confessions collected in a recent paper by Professors Richard Leo and Richard Ofshe. After close examination of trial court records and other similar sources, the article concludes that these allegedly false confessions were in all likelihood actually true confessions given by guilty criminals. The article concludes by exploring the lessons that might be drawn from the high proportion of guilty criminals in the collection of "innocent" false confessors. Academic research on miscarriages of justice should not rely on mass media descriptions of the evidence against criminal defendants. The media too often slants its coverage in the direction of discovering "news" by finding that an innocent person has been wrongfully convicted. Moreover, reliance on second-hand media accounts overgeneralizes the false confession problem, obscuring the fact that the false confession problem is apparently concentrated among a narrow and vulnerable population: the mentally retarded.