On the decision to testify in one's own behalf: Effects of withheld evidence, defendant's sexual preferences, and juror dogmatism on juridic decisions.

360 undergraduates high or low in dogmatism served as members of 6-person juries that assessed the culpability of a homosexual or heterosexual defendant in a murder trial. Defendants either (a) invoked the 5th Amendment in response to specific crime-relevant interrogation, (b) invoked the 5th Amendment by opting not to take the witness stand, or (c) took the stand and provided substantive answers for all crime-relevant interrogation. Results indicate that defendants who invoked the 5th Amendment (either on the stand or by declining to take the stand) were judged more likely to be guilty and more deserving of conviction than their counterparts who took the stand and answered all questions. As anticipated, juror dogmatism interacted with the defendant's sexual preferences to affect juridic decisions. However, the form of these interactions were contrary to expectations: High dogmatic jurors were no more punitive toward homosexual than heterosexual defendants, whereas jurors low in dogmatism were actually more lenient toward homosexual than heterosexual defendants. An explanation for the leniency of nondogmatic jurors toward homosexual defendants is proposed, and some implications of this line of reasoning for future research are discussed. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Order effects in multiple decisions by groups: A demonstration with mock juries and trial procedures.

Assessed the effects of the order in which groups undertake different tasks in a multitask situation, using mock juries. 461 undergraduates watched a videotaped enactment of a criminal trial involving 3 joined charges and then, either individually or as members of 6-person groups, decided on the guilt or innocence of the defendant on all 3 charges in 1 of 3 orders: descending seriousness, ascending seriousness, or no specified order. On the charge of medium seriousness, the proportion of convictions for both individuals and groups was greater in the descending seriousness order. Conviction on earlier charges significantly increased the relative frequency of conviction on later charges. Findings are discussed in relation both to earlier results that support a contrast explanation of such order effects and to the influence of task order on group decision processes in general. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Person perception and self-awareness: Knowledge of influences on one's own judgments.

96 college students watched 50 short interviews and rated the interviewees' intelligence, friendliness, or deceptiveness, then later estimated how the interviewees' characteristics had influenced their judgments. Ss were moderately accurate at estimating the impact of characteristics on their judgments, with the mean correlation between the actual influence and their estimates being 42. To control for Ss' use of a priori theories of causation, observers who did not see interviews or make person-perception judgments estimated how these characteristics would have influenced their judgments. Ss' self-awareness remained even after controlling for observers' estimates of effects. Although Ss showed self-awareness, their beliefs about what influenced them were also shaped by a priori theories about what should have influenced them. Ss' degree of self-awareness varied with the person-perception judgments they had made and the characteristics they were assessing. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Authoritarianism and decisions of mock juries: Evidence of jury bias and group polarization.

A mock-jury experiment investigated the effects of authoritarianism on juror and jury decisions and examined the generalizability of the group polarization hypothesis for a simulated jury task. 132 high- and 125 low authoritarians (as assessed by the California F Scale) listened to a murder trial and then made judgments about guilt and punishment as individuals, in 6 person juries, and again after deliberations as individuals. As predicted, both high-authoritarian jurors and juries reached guilty verdicts more frequently and imposed more severe punishment than low authoritarians. Further, high authoritarians showed more prediscussion–postdiscussion verdict changes than low authoritarians. Results also support the polarization hypothesis in a jury paradigm. Deliberations produced a shift toward greater severity of punishment for high authoritarians but toward increased leniency for low authoritarians. Guilt verdicts shifted toward acquittal for all jurors. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impact of a group decision on perception of one's own and others' attitudes.

We designed two experiments to examine the influence of a group decision on subjects' estimates of the attitudes of group members. In Experiment 1, subjects were led to believe that their initial vote in a jury decision-making task either agreed or disagreed with the majority vote and, independently of agreement with the majority, that their vote either agreed or disagreed with the final group decision. Subjects' own attitudes changed in the direction of the majority position only when the group decision was inconsistent with their initial vote. Consistent with prior research on the group attribution error, subjects inferred a correspondence between the final group decision and the other jurors' attitudes about the guilt or innocence of the defendant. In Experiment 2, subjects actively participated in or passively observed a group decision that either had or did not have direct consequences for the voting group. We found evidence of the group attribution error in both active participants' and passive observers' inferences about the attitudes of group members. Moreover, subjects tended to infer correspondence between the decision and the attitudes of voting members only when the decision had no immediate consequences for the group. (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 consolidation of plaintiffs: The effects of number of plaintiffs on jurors' liability decisions, damage awards, and cognitive processing of evidence.

In this study, 135 jury-eligible adults were randomly assigned to 1 of 5 aggregations of plaintiffs involving 1, 2, 4, 6, and 10 claimants. Jurors were shown a 5- to 6-hr trial involving claims of differential repetitive stress injuries by each plaintiff. Measures concerning liability, damages, and various cognitive and attributional factors were collected. The defendant was more likely to be judged as liable as the number of plaintiffs increased. Awards reached a zenith at 4 plaintiffs and then began to decrease. Increases in the number of plaintiffs who were aggregated degraded information processing. Limits of juror competence in complex trials and juror aids were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An integrative framework for explaining reactions to decisions: Interactive effects of outcomes and procedures.

The authors suggest that procedural and distributive factors interactively combine to influence individuals' reactions to their encounters with other people, groups, and organizations. Results from 45 independent samples (reviewed herein) show that (1) level of procedural justice is more positively related to individuals' reactions when outcome fairness or valence is relatively low and (2) level of outcome fairness or valence is more positively related to individuals' reactions when procedural justice is relatively low. They present various explanations of the interaction effect. Theoretical progress may be achieved through future efforts to delineate the conditions under which each of the explanations is more versus less likely to account for the interaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Validity of personnel decisions: A conceptual analysis of the inferential and evidential bases.

Issues common to both the process of building psychological theories and validating personnel decisions are examined. Inferences linking psychological constructs and operational measures of constructs are organized into a conceptual framework, and validation is characterized as the process of accumulating various forms of judgmental and empirical evidence to support these inferences. The traditional concepts of construct-, and content-, and criterion-related validity are unified within this framework. This unified view of validity is then contrasted with more conventional views (e.g., Uniform Guidelines, 1978), and misconceptions about the validation of employment tests are examined. Next, the process of validating predictor constructs is extended to delineate the critical inferences unique to validating performance criteria. Finally, an agenda for programmatic personnel selection research is described, emphasizing a shift in the behavioral scientist's role in the personnel selection process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Treating another's actions as one's own: Children's memory of and learning from joint activity.

Children often overestimate their contribution to collaborative activities. Across 2 studies, the authors investigated whether this memory bias supports internalization of the actions of others in the context of joint exchanges. After taking turns with (high collaborative condition; Studies 1 and 2) or working independently of (low collaborative condition; Study 2) an adult experimenter to create a series of novel toys, children's agent memory and reconstruction ability were assessed. Children in the high collaborative condition but not the low collaborative condition systematically overclaimed the actions of their social partner, more frequently reporting having completed steps performed by the experimenter than vice versa. This "I did it" bias was related to learning performance: high collaborative children outperformed low collaborative children both during an immediate reconstruction task and 4 months later, and the strength of the bias predicted children's independent toy-building accuracy. It is argued that the "I did it" bias may emerge as part of a general process of learning from others and is supported by a common framework for representing self-actions and other actions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-monitoring and self-protective biases in use of consensus information to predict one's own behavior.

It is often important and useful for people to predict their own behavior in novel situations. Although theory suggests that such predictions should be based at least in part on consensus information, some past research in this area suggests that people ignore it. Previous investigators have argued that, instead of using cosensus information, people predict their own behavior on the basis of their personal histories. Two studies reported in this article demonstrate that people are willing to make use of consensus information in predicting their own behavior. However, self-monitoring is found to regulate consensus information use. High self-monitors are more responsive to complimentary consensus information than are low self-monitors, and low self-monitors are more responsive to threatening consensus information than are high self-monitors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of the participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related differences in responses to thoughts of one's own death: Mortality salience and judgments of moral transgressions.

Two experiments explored age differences in response to reminders of death. Terror management research has shown that death reminders lead to increased adherence to and defense of one's cultural worldview. In Study 1, the effect of mortality salience (MS) on evaluations of moral transgressions made by younger and older adults was compared. Whereas younger adults showed the typical pattern of harsher judgments in response to MS, older adults did not. Study 2 compared younger and older adults' responses to both the typical MS induction and a more subtle death reminder. Whereas younger adults responded to both MS inductions with harsher evaluations, older adults made significantly less harsh evaluations after the subtle MS induction. Explanations for this developmental shift in responses to reminders of death are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Awareness of influences on one's own judgments: The roles of covariation detection and attention to the judgment process.

Forty-eight actor participants examined profiles of target persons and judged how much they would like each target. Initial-attention actors were instructed before judging any of the profiles to attend to how target factors influenced their liking judgments. Delayed-attention actors received these instructions after judging the first block of profiles and before judging the second. No-attention actors did not receive these instructions at all. After judging the target profiles, actors estimated how each of several target factors had influenced their liking judgments. Access to covariation information greatly increased the accuracy of observers' causal reports. Covariation detection appeared to make less of a contribution, however, to actors' own causal reports, which displayed a substantial level of accuracy even after we controlled statistically for the possible contributions of covariation detection and shared theories. Contrary to expectations, the attention instructions actually decreased the accuracy of actors' self-reports for the first block of judgments but had no effect on accuracy for the second block of judgments. Results show that some form of privileged self-knowledge contributed to the accuracy of actors' causal reports. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hath he suffered enough? Effects of jury dogmatism, defendant similarity, and defendant's pretrial suffering on juridic decisions.

288 undergraduates were randomly assigned to 6-person juries (that were in turn assigned to 8 experimental conditions) to assess the culpability of a demographically similar or dissimilar defendant who had suffered pretrial injuries that were either relevant or irrelevant to the criminal incident in question. Although jury dogmatism had no effect on verdicts rendered, dogmatic juries sentenced more severely than did less dogmatic aggregations. However, this severity of sentencing effect was qualified by an interaction between jury dogmatism and relevance of suffering. Nondogmatic juries assigned shorter sentences to defendants whose suffering was crime relevant rather than crime irrelevant, apparently treating crime-relevant suffering as a partial restoration of equity for harmdoing. By contrast, dogmatic juries appeared to adopt a just-world orientation toward crime-relevant suffering by assigning longer sentences to defendants whose injuries were crime relevant as opposed to crime irrelevant. An information-utilization model is proposed to explain these results. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The spotlight effect in social judgment: An egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one's own actions and appearance.

This research provides evidence that people overestimate the extent to which their actions and appearance are noted by others, a phenomenon dubbed the spotlight effect. In Studies 1 and 2, participants who were asked to don a T-shirt depicting either a flattering or potentially embarrassing image overestimated the number of observers who would be able to recall what was pictured on the shirt. In Study 3, participants in a group discussion overestimated how prominent their positive and negative utterances were to their fellow discussants. Studies 4 and 5 provide evidence supporting an anchoring-and-adjustment interpretation of the spotlight effect. In particular, people appear to anchor on their own rich phenomenological experience and then adjust insufficiently—to take into account the perspective of others. The discussion focuses on the manifestations and implications of the spotlight effect across a host of everyday social phenomena. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of motive information and crime unusualness on jurors' judgments in insanity cases

This study investigated the effects of motive information and crime unusualness on mock jurors' judgments in two homicide cases in which the defendant pleaded insanity. Undergraduates (N = 371) read case information and rendered a verdict, estimated the probability that the defendant was insane, and made additional judgments about the defendant's mental state. The defendant was more likely to be judged insane if the crime was oddly committed rather than committed in a typical manner. Prosecution motive information also affected judgments; the defendant was considered more sane if the prosecution presented evidence of a strong, reasonable motive. Evidence of a "crazy," unreasonable motive, presented by the defense, caused jurors to see the defendant in one of the cases as more insane.     

Does one ever really laugh at one's own expense? The case of Jews and Arabs in Israel.

Investigated the problem of self-aimed humor by examining the case of Jews and Arabs in Israel. Study 1, with 80 Jewish and 60 Arab high school seniors, dealt with preferences of jokes. Ss were asked to rate the funniness of 5 jokes with a Jewish butt and 5 jokes with an Arab butt. Jews preferred jokes with an Arab butt, as did the Arabs who felt positively toward Israel, but not those whose attitudes were negative. Study 2, with 139 Jewish and 111 Arab high school seniors, dealt with the production of humor. Ss were asked to respond humorously to 13 cartoonlike drawings depicting an Arab and a Jew in conversation. Both Jews and Arabs expressed more aggression toward an Arab butt. When humorous answers toward the Ss themselves and toward subgroups within each group were compared, no differences between Jews and Arabs were found. The only difference found was in a special kind of self-aimed humor, in which aggression is turned inward but the situation is denied, and the S finds a humorous way to benefit from it. Jews used this kind of humor more often. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interactive effects of sex and status on self-disclosure.

Rated the degree of self-disclosure of 40 male and 40 female undergraduates in interviews with either male or female interviewers of high or low status. A 2 * 2 * 2 analysis of variance revealed that (a) males disclosed more to females, while females disclosed more to males; (b) dyads containing a female resulted in more disclosure than all male dyads; (c) males revealed more to high-status interviewers, while females disclosed more to low-status interviewers; and (d) high- as opposed to low-status male interviewers elicited more disclosure from all Ss, while status of female interviewers resulted in no significant differences. The need for use of multiple measures in self-disclosure research and implications for client-therapist matching is noted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hypertension and neuropsychological performance in men: Interactive effects of age.

Potentially interactive effects of hypertension and age on the performance of neuropsychological and information processing tests were examined in 123 untreated hypertensive and 50 normotensive men. After covarying education, average alcohol consumption, trait anxiety, and depression scores, results indicated an interaction of age and hypertension. Young hypertensive men (23–40 years) scored significantly worse than young normotensive men on tests of attention/executive function and working memory; middle-aged hypertensive (41–56 years) and normotensive participants were not distinguished by any measures. Hypertensive men performed significantly more poorly than normotensive men on tests of manual dexterity. Results suggest that neuropsychological sequelae of hypertension are more pronounced in young than in middle-aged hypertensive individuals and are independent of various demographic, psychosocial, and alcohol-related factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)