Describing jurors' personal conceptions of insanity and their relationship to case judgments.

In a series of studies, prototype theory was applied to describe the nature, variability, and effect of jurors' conceptions of insanity. Specifically, (a) 80 jurors described the features of their prototypes of insanity, (b) 5 jurors combined similar features to develop a core set of features to measure individual differences, and (c) 135 jurors and 236 undergraduates completed measures of individual differences in prototypes and attitudes toward the insanity defense and the criminal justice system and rendered insanity case judgments. Results suggest that (a) jurors' prototypes of insanity cannot be reduced to legal or psychiatric constructs; (b) although there are marked individual differences in prototypes, there are 3 identifiable groups of jurors with prototypes that emphasize severe mental disability, "moral insanity," and mental state at the time of the offense; and (c) these prototypes are associated with case-relevant attitudes and affect the way in which jurors interpret case information and render verdicts. Implications for future research, legal reform, and the presentation of expert evidence are analyzed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of complexity on jurors' verdicts and construction of evidence.

One hundred twenty mock jurors heard 1 of several versions of a civil trial. The tort trial was either high or low in information load and contained evidence that either clearly favored the plaintiffs or was ambiguous. Expert witnesses testified in either technical or less technical language. Verdicts favored the plaintiffs when the evidence was clear and was presented in technical language because technical language enhanced witnesses' credibility when the evidence was clear. Although high information loads and technical language hindered evidence processing, jurors endeavored to comprehend, as indicated by the recall of more facts and alternative constructions of the evidence when that evidence was ambiguous. However, those constructions were of poorer quality, incorporating evidence of lesser probative value. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of chronically and temporarily accessible information on life satisfaction judgments.

The authors examined the influence of temporarily and chronically accessible information on life satisfaction judgments. Meta-analyses revealed high retest-reliability of life satisfaction judgments and weak effects of the item order of domain and global satisfaction judgments. Study 1 (N=225) failed to replicate a widely cited finding of strong item-order effects. In Studies 2 (N=100), 3 (N=200), and 4 (N=222), chronically accessible information was a strong predictor of life satisfaction judgments, whereas item order had a relatively small effect. Study 5 (N=651) demonstrated that the results generalize to single item measures and judgments of shorter time periods. The results suggest that life satisfaction judgments are more heavily based on chronically accessible than temporarily accessible information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects on opinions of a change in scale judgments.

"If a person with a moderately pro position accepts items extending from neutral to strongly pro… a change limited to his perception of the moderately con items, in which they come to appear extremely con, should not affect his expressed position. But a change that makes the moderately con items appear less extreme or even neutral in his perception may incline him to agree with them." The study tested the effects of such a change in judgments on expressed opinion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective factors in clinicians' judgments of insanity: Comparison of a hypothetical case and an actual case.

In a series of three survey studies, we investigated psychiatrists' and clinical psychologists' responses to questions about the insanity defense. We found that subjects' ideology and background were predictive of their attitude toward the insanity defense in general and that this general attitude was, in turn, predictive of how subjects responded to a particular, hypothetical case. In a national sample of 262 clinicians, a combination of nine predominantly subjective variables accounted for 34% of the variance in responses to a hypothetical case. Last, in a follow-up validity study of 46 clinicians, their responses to the insanity defense of John Hinckley closely approximated their responses to the hypothetical case on which the three surveys were based. We conclude that recent reforms of the insanity defense that prohibit direct testimony as to legal sanity or insanity were a positive step. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of a communication on attitude change and scale judgments.

"The purposes of this study were to assess the effects of a persuasive communication on attitude change and on judgments of the scale values of opinion items and to examine the relationship between attitude change and evaluations of the communication. An experimental group of subjects was exposed to a communication advocating abolution of capital punishment, after which they evaluated the communication, judged the scale values of 36 opinion statements, and revealed their own attitudes by responding to 20 opinion items… . The major results are: The communication changed attitudes in the direction advocated. But the groups were alike in their judgments of the scale values of the related opinion statements. Hence, a change in scale judgments is not a necessary condition for attitude change." From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:3GD33W. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of positive affect on the unusualness of word associations.

Investigated the influence of positive affect, induced in 33 differing ways, on the uniqueness of word associations in 2 studies with 227 undergraduates. In Study 1, affect was induced by means of word-association to affectively balanced words. Results show that Ss in the positive-affect conditions gave more unusual 1st associates to neutral words, according to the norms developed by D. S. Palermo and J. J. Jenkins (1964) in a pilot study, than did Ss in the control conditions. In Study 2, where word type (positive, neutral, negative) was a 2nd factor along with affect, in a between-Ss design, associates to positive words were also more unusual and diverse than were those to other words. Results are related to those of studies suggesting that positive affect may facilitate creative problem solving and to other work suggesting an impact of positive feelings on cognitive organization. Findings indicate unusual or flexible responding as a function of positive affect. (45 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of a narrative model on children's moral judgments.

Tested the hypothesis that children's moral orientation can be influenced by exposure to narrated models that express consistent moral judgments based on either the consequences of an action or the motives of the individual. 66 1st and 2nd graders were randomly assigned to 3 conditions: objective model (judgments based on consequences), subjective model (judgments based on motives), or no model, with an equal number of males and females in each group. Following the procedure of Piaget and others, a pretest presented all Ss with pairs of stories contrasting a well-intentioned act involving serious consequences with an ill-intentioned act involving minor consequences. In the experimental phase which followed the pretest by 2 wks, Ss were exposed to narrative characters who made consistent moral judgments. A posttest conducted by another E followed immediately. Results indicate that the objective model condition significantly increased responding based on consequences, and the subjective model condition significantly increased responding on motives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of image-based information in judgments of surface-reflectance properties

We examined how well we can recover surface-reflectance properties from shading patterns under changes in surface shape. The stimulus we used was a square surface modulated in depth by a low-pass-filtered random field and rendered by the Phong illumination model [Commun. ACM 18, 311 (1975)]. Two different surface images (target and match) were presented side by side, with either the viewing direction or the surface-normal direction rotating around the horizontal axis. The target shape was manipulated by changing the spatial spectrum, and the target reflectance was manipulated by changing the diffuse-reflection coefficient and the specular-reflection exponent (shininess) of the Phong model. The shape parameters of the match stimulus were fixed, but its reflectance parameters were under the control of subjects, who had to make the apparent reflectance of the two surfaces as similar as possible. The results showed that the constant error (difference between simulated and matched values) was large except when the two surfaces had the same shape parameters or when they differed only in scale. The pattern of the constant errors and response variabilities suggests that the judgments of the subjects were based on the similarity of the luminance histogram of the surface image. Our results demonstrate a limitation of surface-reflectance constancy for changes in shape and the importance of image-based information in reflectance judgments. The results are discussed in relation to previous studies that showed effects of spatial layout on surface-reflectance perception.     

Context effects in judgments of causation.

It is hypothesized that causal explanations for an occurrence vary as a function of the causal background against which the occurrence is considered. Three experiments are presented that test propositions regarding the operation of the causal background in the selection of causal explanations. Findings indicate that factors previously shown to affect subjects' attributions—specifically, role (actor vs. observer), covariation information (consensus and distinctiveness), and quality of performance (positive vs. negative)—may do so by guiding subjects' selection of a causal background. Evidence indicates that these factors may not have the predicted effect on subjects' attributions when competing cues, such as context or wording of the causal question, suggest the relevance of conflicting causal backgrounds. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Flexible use of recent information in causal and predictive judgments.

Associative and statistical theories of causal and predictive learning make opposite predictions for situations in which the most recent information contradicts the information provided by older trials (e.g., acquisition followed by extinction). Associative theories predict that people will rely on the most recent information to best adapt their behavior to the changing environment. Statistical theories predict that people will integrate what they have learned in the two phases. The results of this study showed one or the other effect as a function of response mode (trial by trial vs. global), type of question (contiguity, causality, or predictiveness), and postacquisition instructions. That is, participants are able to give either an integrative judgment, or a judgment that relies on recent information as a function of test demands. The authors concluded that any model must allow for flexible use of information once it has been acquired. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Order effects on children's moral and achievement judgments.

24 kindergartners were presented with 24 stories varying in the actor's intent, the outcome of the actor's behavior, and the competitiveness of the situation (noncompetitive/moral vs competitive/achievement dilemmas). Ss evaluated the actor by administering rewards or punishments in each of the stories on an 11-point graphic scale. Reversing the order of the stimulus cues increased the relative importance of outcome. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ain't misbehavin': The effects of age and intentionality on judgments about misconduct.

In 2 person perception experiments, young and older perceivers read a scenario about a young or old female target who leaves a store without paying for a hat. In Experiment 1, the target claims she forgot she was wearing the hat when questioned by the manager. Perceivers thought the manager would have greater sympathy, less anger, and would recommend less punishment when the target was old. In Experiment 2, the target clearly forgot to pay for the hat, clearly stole it, or had ambiguous intentions. In the ambiguous condition, perceivers attributed the young target's behavior more to stealing and the old target's behavior more to forgetting. In the forget condition, young perceivers had equal sympathy for the young and old targets and held them similarly responsible, but older perceivers had greater sympathy for the forgetful old target and held her less responsible than they did the forgetful young target. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The implicit power motive and sociosexuality in men and women: Pancultural effects of responsibility.

Research has shown that an individual's implicit power motive relates to 2 types of behavioral clusters: either prosocial, socially appropriate behaviors or profligate, impulsive behaviors. The present study examined the relationship between individuals' implicit power motives and their tendency to engage in sexual activities without strong emotional ties (i.e., sociosexuality). For men, but not for women, this relationship was hypothesized to be moderated by an implicit disposition for responsibility. Whereas most research has been limited to Euro-American contexts, the present study examined the relationship between power motive, disposition for responsibility, and sociosexuality among participants recruited in Cameroon, China, Costa Rica, and Germany. Explicit Big Five measures of personality were controlled for. For women, only a main effect of responsibility on sociosexuality was found across cultural groups; for men, the association between power motivation and sociosexuality was moderated by responsibility, independent of cultural group. Traits of agreeableness and conscientiousness were systematically related to lower levels of sociosexuality. Effects for both implicit and explicit measures of personality suggest universality in the processes associated with more enactments of sociosexuality, confirming in part the hypothesized role of responsibility in channeling the realization of the power motive into less impulsive activities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multiple congruity effects in judgments of magnitude.

Four experiments investigated a novel finding in the area of symbolic magnitude comparisons: Congruity effects may occur with subsets of objects. Such multiple congruity effects appear to signal the creation of size-ordered categories. Exp 1 observed separate congruity effects for large and small pairs despite the intermingling of pairs within a session. Exp 2 determined whether this result was an artifact of the items used. Exps 3 and 4 examined whether linear separability on a dimension of size or on some other correlated dimension was a prerequisite for multiple size-ordered categorization. The results of these experiments suggest that congruity effects are properly regarded as indicating the presence of an organized structure or category. Thus, to the extent that congruity effects typify magnitude comparisons, the processing of relational information appears to implicate categorization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contextual effects on the calibration of probabilistic judgments.

24 practicing auditors employed by public accounting firms participated in a study to determine the extent to which contextual factors affect the calibration of their subjective prior probability distributions (PPDs). Probabilistic responses to general-knowledge (almanac) questions were analyzed and compared to responses obtained in a previous study by the present 3rd author et al (see record 1983-07156-001), which used the same type of Ss and methods in a substantive audit judgment context. Results indicate that Ss' judgments in the general-knowledge task context were miscalibrated and significantly overconfident, whereas their judgments in the substantive audit task context were less miscalibrated and predominantly underconfident. Findings suggest that calibration research results may not be generalizable across applied judgment–decision contexts. Implications for practical applications of Bayesian decision models, improvement of preexperimental training methods, and the effects of incentives on miscalibration are discussed. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)