Discriminatory attitudes against unvaccinated people during the pandemic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, sizeable groups of unvaccinated people persist even in countries with high vaccine access1. As a consequence, vaccination became a controversial subject of debate and even protest2. Here we assess whether people express discriminatory attitudes in the form of negative affectivity, stereotypes and exclusionary attitudes in family and political settings across groups defined by COVID-19 vaccination status. We quantify discriminatory attitudes between vaccinated and unvaccinated citizens in 21 countries, covering a diverse set of cultures across the world. Across three conjoined experimental studies (n = 15,233), we demonstrate that vaccinated people express discriminatory attitudes towards unvaccinated individuals at a level as high as discriminatory attitudes that are commonly aimed at immigrant and minority populations3-5. By contrast, there is an absence of evidence that unvaccinated individuals display discriminatory attitudes towards vaccinated people, except for the presence of negative affectivity in Germany and the USA. We find evidence in support of discriminatory attitudes against unvaccinated individuals in all countries except for Hungary and Romania, and find that discriminatory attitudes are more strongly expressed in cultures with stronger cooperative norms. Previous research on the psychology of cooperation has shown that individuals react negatively against perceived 'free-riders'6,7, including in the domain of vaccinations8,9. Consistent with this, we find that contributors to the public good of epidemic control (that is, vaccinated individuals) react with discriminatory attitudes towards perceived free-riders (that is, unvaccinated individuals). National leaders and vaccinated members of the public appealed to moral obligations to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake10,11, but our findings suggest that discriminatory attitudes-including support for the removal of fundamental rights-simultaneously emerged.

Falling through the cracks: Failing to identify compromised Miranda abilities for defendants with limited cognitive capacities.

Custodial suspects must be informed of their Miranda rights (Miranda v. Arizona, 1966) prior to police questioning. Since this landmark decision, scholars have rigorously studied Miranda comprehension and reasoning among vulnerable groups including those with intellectual disabilities (ID). However, the focus on ID has left arrestees with limited cognitive capacities (i.e., LCCs with IQs between 70 and 85) entirely overlooked. The current dataset addressed this oversight using a large (N = 820) sample of pretrial defendants who had completed the Standardized Assessment of Miranda Abilities (SAMA). Traditional (i.e., ID and no-ID) criterion groups were first analyzed with the standard error of measurement (SEM) removed. Second, a nuanced three-group framework included defendants with LCCs. Results indicate that LCC defendants are vulnerable to impaired Miranda comprehension (i.e., limited recall of the Miranda warning and deficits in Miranda-related vocabulary knowledge). Not surprisingly, their waiver decisions were often impaired by crucial misconceptions (e.g., seeing the investigating officers as beneficently on their side). The practical implications of these findings were underscored with respect to Constitutional safeguards for this critically important group, who have appeared to fall through the cracks in the criminal justice system.

Reassessing the relationship between procedural justice and police legitimacy.

OBJECTIVE: A large body of cross-sectional research has identified a positive relationship between perceptions of police procedural justice and legitimacy. Following Tyler's theoretical framework, studies have often interpreted the observed relationship as evidence of an unequivocal causal connection from procedural justice to legitimacy. Here we reexamined the validity of this conclusion by considering the temporal order of that association and the potential biasing effect of time-invariant third common causes. HYPOTHESES: (a) Past perceptions of police procedural justice would predict future perceptions of legitimacy; (b) Past perceptions of police legitimacy would predict future perceptions of procedural justice; and (c) Perceptions of police procedural justice and legitimacy would be associated as a result of 3rd common causes. METHOD: We fitted random intercepts cross-lagged panel models to 7 waves of a longitudinal sample of 1,354 young offenders (M = 16 years) from the "Pathways to Desistance" study. This allowed us to explore the directional paths between perceptions of police procedural justice and legitimacy, while controlling for time-invariant participant heterogeneity. RESULTS: We did not find evidence of the assumed temporal association; lagged within-participant perceptions of procedural justice rarely predicted within-participant perceptions of legitimacy. We did not find evidence of a reciprocal relationship either. Instead, we detected substantial time-invariant participant heterogeneity, and evidence of legitimacy perceptions being self-reproduced. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings challenge the internal validity of the commonly reported positive associations between procedural justice and legitimacy reported in studies using cross-sectional data. Most of such association is explained away after considering time-invariant participant heterogeneity and previous perceptions of legitimacy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Problems of Control: Alcohol Dependence, Anorexia Nervosa, and the Flexible Interpretation of Mental Incapacity Tests.

This article investigates the ability of mental incapacity tests to account for problems of control, through a study of the approach to alcohol dependence and a comparison with the approach to anorexia nervosa, in England and Wales. The focus is on two areas of law where questions of legal and mental capacity arise for people who are alcohol dependent: decisions about treatment for alcohol dependence and diminished responsibility for a killing. The mental incapacity tests used in these legal contexts are importantly different-one involves a 'cognitive' test, while the other includes an explicit impaired-control limb-and the comparison provides insight into a longstanding debate about the virtues of one type of test over the other. It is shown that both kinds of test can take control problems into account, but also that both can be interpreted in narrow and wide ways that significantly influence the outcome of the assessment. It is therefore argued that to a large extent, it is not the kind of mental incapacity test that matters, but how the test is interpreted. It is further proposed that value judgements are playing an unrecognised and inappropriate role in shaping this interpretation. This raises concerns about the current approach to assessing the impact of alcohol dependency on the capacity to make decisions about alcohol use or treatment, as well as broader concerns about flexibility within incapacity tests.

Interrogated with Intellectual Disabilities: The Risks of False Confession.

False confessions happen. At least 245 people have been exonerated from convictions in cases featuring confessions that were simply not true. Confessions offer a narrative that allows law enforcement, and society in general, to neatly resolve cases with apparent clarity and closure. And yet the pressures officers place on suspects to provide that closure weigh disproportionately on the vulnerable, including individuals with intellectual disabilities. These individuals are disadvantaged at every step of the custodial interrogation, and they face heightened risks of falsely confessing. Moreover, the principal judicial safeguards against false confessions--assessing a suspect's Miranda waiver and determining whether a confession was voluntarily given within the bounds of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause--provide little protection for the innocent with intellectual disabilities. Few pieces of scholarship focus specifically on the heightened risks faced by individuals with intellectual disabilities throughout the process of police interrogation. This Note describes the various ways these individuals are disadvantaged. And it offers an additional data point illustrating the vulnerability of people with intellectual disabilities. This Note analyzes the 245 individuals (as of June 2, 2017) on the National Registry of Exonerations who have falsely confessed. Over one-quarter of them display indicia of intellectual disability. This percentage dwarfs the prevalence of people with intellectual disabilities in the general population and even exceeds most estimates of the proportion of the prison population suffering from intellectual disabilities. This Note concludes with several policy and doctrinal suggestions to better protect individuals with intellectual disabilities from the risks of false confession.

"Life's hurried tangled road": A therapeutic jurisprudence analysis of why dedicated counsel must be assigned to represent persons with mental disabilities in community settings.

The right to counsel is a fundamental right for individuals facing criminal processes and involuntary civil commitment. However, individuals with serious mental illnesses are subject to many community proceedings (e.g., being taken by law enforcement to a crisis drop-off center) where counsel is not available. We argue that, unless meaningful counsel is provided in such situations, the cycle of arrest, hospitalization, and stays in the community will continue for these individuals, who are among some of the most disenfranchised citizens in the nation and are often without any meaningful voice.

Overcoming Innocents' Naiveté: Pre-interrogation Decision-making Among Innocent Suspects.

Suspects, especially innocent ones, are highly susceptible to waiving their interrogation rights. This research tested the ability of two strategies to overcome innocent suspects' willingness to waive their rights. One strategy was based on the social influence of scarcity (i.e., not constraining the pre-interrogation time limit). The other strategy focused on disrupting individuals' cognitive fluency during the decision-making process (i.e., violating their induced expectation of offering a waiver). Disrupting innocent individuals' cognitive fluency increased their willingness to invoke their rights and, notably, was not qualified by interactions with any other factors. However, scarcity did not influence individuals' pre-interrogation decision-making. Results also further established the association between innocent individuals' naïve mindset and their willingness to waive their rights - specifically, innocents' willingness to waive their rights increased with the strength of their just world beliefs. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed. The importance and benefit of reforming pre-interrogation protocols using fair and feasible strategies that would disrupt suspects' cognitive fluency are emphasized. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Legal System and Alzheimer's Disease: Social Workers and Lawyers' Perceptions and Experiences.

The expected increase in the number of people living with Alzheimer's disease (AD) worldwide will be accompanied by an increase in the number of cases involving persons with AD brought up to the courts. This study examined the perceptions and experiences of social workers and lawyers regarding these cases. Three focus groups including social workers and lawyers (n = 26) were conducted. Two main themes were raised by the participants: (a) the role of social workers and lawyers in court cases regarding AD, and (b) the need for improving legal encounters involving persons with AD. Similarities and differences were found in both professionals' interpretations of these shared themes. Results of this study emphasize the need for increasing the knowledge and interprofessional training provided to social workers and lawyers involved in legal cases dealing with issues involving persons with Alzheimer's disease.

Post Civil War African American History: Brief Periods of Triumph, and Then Despair.

During Reconstruction, which is often called the most progressive period in American history, African Americans made great strides. By 1868 African American men constituted a majority of registered voters in South Carolina and Mississippi, and by 1870 eighty-five percent of Mississippi's black jurors could read and write. However, Reconstruction was followed by approximately one hundred years of Jim Crow laws, lynching, disenfranchisement, sharecropping, unequal educational resources, terrorism, racial caricatures, and convict leasing. The Civil Rights Revolution finally ended that period of despair, but the era of mass incarceration can be understood as a reaction to the Civil Rights Movement. This article attempts to understand the persistence of racism in the United States from slavery's end until the present.

An investigation of implied Miranda waivers and Powell wording in a mock-crime study.

To guard against coerced self-incrimination, the Supreme Court of the United States outlined in Miranda v. Arizona (1966) what arresting officers must convey to custodial suspects for resulting statements to be admissible into evidence. During the ensuing decades, the Court has continued to grapple with the requisite wording and practical enforcement of these Constitutional rights. In Florida v. Powell (2010), the Court upheld the conviction of a defendant whose Miranda warning affirmed that before questioning he had the right to an attorney, but failed to specify that during questioning he had this right as well. In Berghuis v. Thompkins (2010), the Court ruled that the right to silence must be invoked explicitly, while valid Miranda waivers could be "implied" by a suspect's actions as well as words. The current study employed a mock crime design to assess the practical effects of these 2 rulings on waiver decisions. The wording change enabled by Powell had little effect on Miranda knowledge and reasoning. With regard to Thompkins, the type of waiver profoundly affected subsequent decisions: 13.7% exercised their rights following implied waivers versus 81.1% with explicit waivers. Importantly, the implied waiver condition produced much higher percentages of confessions (17.6% vs. 3.8%) and of admissions about incriminating information (29.4% vs. 9.4%).

Police interviewing and interrogation of juvenile suspects: a descriptive examination of actual cases.

Although empirical attention to police interrogation has gained traction in recent years, comparatively few studies have examined interrogation of juvenile suspects, and virtually none have examined actual interrogations. Despite a growing literature on youths' interrogation-related capacities, we still know very little about what actually transpires when police question youth. The present study examines electronically recorded police interviews with juveniles to describe the characteristics, processes, and outcomes that occur in actual juvenile interrogations, including interview duration, individuals present, and confessions. Fifty-seven electronic recordings from 17 police departments were analyzed using observational research software. The median juvenile interrogation lasted 46 min, though the range was extensive (6 min to nearly 5 hr). Youth frequently submitted to questioning without a parent or advocate present, and disruptions to the interview process were common. Interrogation outcomes varied and included full confessions, partially incriminating admissions, and denials of guilt. Results from this study provide context for interrogation research using other methods and suggest that youth may frequently consent to interrogation in the absence of important legal protections.

Chemo killed the small-talk gene.

Urvashi Vaid is a community organizer and writer active in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and social justice movements for over three decades. She is currently Director of the Engaging Tradition Project at the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia University Law School. She is founder of LPAC, the first lesbian political action committee, and sits on the Board of Directors of the Gill Foundation. Vaid's past positions include Executive Director of the Arcus Foundation, Deputy Director of Governance and Civil Society Unit for the Ford Foundation, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and staff attorney for the ACLU National Prison Project. She is author of the books Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and The Assumptions of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Politics, and Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay & Lesbian Liberation, and co-editor of the book Creating Change: Public Policy, Sexuality and Civil Rights. Urvashi has had thyroid cancer and stage III breast cancer.

Security and subjective wellbeing: the experiences of unaccompanied young people seeking asylum in the UK.

This article considers the relevance of the notion of ontological security - a sense of order, stability, routine and predictability to life - to contemporary conceptualisations of wellbeing. Drawing on in-depth interviews with unaccompanied young people seeking asylum in the UK, it demonstrates how a positive sense of self and being able to visualise a place and role in the world into the future were integral to their notion of wellbeing, offering an important counter to the pervasive sense of living in limbo. The article argues that this fundamental need for a projected self is largely neglected in contemporary discussions on wellbeing. To date the idea of security as a determinant of wellbeing has been primarily constructed around the notion of protection from harm and the provision of the requirements for physical, emotional, economic and social wellbeing in the here and now. Findings from this research suggest that those providing services and support to young people who have experienced trauma need to consider how they might best nurture in them a sense of place, belonging and security into the future. Equally, they have implications for how we conceptualise and operationalise wellbeing more generally.

Investigating the effects of repeated Miranda warnings: do they perform a curative function on common Miranda misconceptions?

In Miranda v. Arizona (1966), the Supreme Court of the United States required that custodial suspects be apprised of their Constitutional rights against self-incrimination. The Court could not have anticipated the rampant popularization of Miranda warnings in subsequent movies and television dramas. Influenced by public media, many arrestees assume that they already "know" their rights, with no awareness of their misconceptions. The current investigation examines whether repeated exposures to Miranda warnings performs any "curative" function (i.e., dispelling common Miranda misconceptions held by pretrial defendants). The accumulative effects of five different Miranda warnings were tested over a several-hour period on 260 detainees. For the nearly half (113 or 43.5%) with three or more misconceptions, improvement (i.e., ≥2 fewer misconceptions) occurred for only 35 defendants. Predictably, this improved group also tended to display a better understanding of Miranda-relevant vocabulary words and a better recall of the administered Miranda warnings than their unimproved counterparts. On average, the improved group also performed better on general measures of intelligence, and listening and reading comprehension, while still evidencing substantial cognitive deficits. The curative function of Miranda advisements is considered in light of these findings.

Looking within: Elevating Black scholarly contributions to empirical approaches in developmental science.

Over the past century, Black American scholars have designed, applied, and promoted conceptual frameworks and research models that propose nuanced understandings of psychological development. This article highlights examples of their contributions to understanding the differential impact of diverse contextual and situational factors. Through examinations of the psychological effects of Blackness on the development of cognition, competence, identity, and social functioning, Black psychologists outline pathways and provide tools for ecological culturally rooted methodologies. These multidisciplinary approaches run in contrast to dominant trends in the field and thus broaden developmental science's reach and influence. In the 1950s, developmental research by Black psychologists was instrumental to the fight for civil rights. Today, it continues to provide a basis for advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Overturning anti-miscegenation laws: news media coverage of the Lovings' legal case against the state of Virginia.

This study fills a gap in scholarship by exploring historical news coverage of interracial relationships. It examines coverage by The New York Times, Washington Post and Times-Herald, and Chicago Tribune of the progression of the landmark civil rights case of Loving v. Virginia, in which the Supreme Court overturned Virginia's anti-miscegenation law, which prohibited marriage between any White and non-White person. An analysis of the frames and sources used in these publications' news stories about the case indicate all three publications' coverage favored the Lovings.

The donor-conceived child's "Right to Personal Identity": the public debate on donor anonymity in the United Kingdom.

On 1 April 2005, with the implementation of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (Disclosure of Donor Information) Regulations 2004, United Kingdom law was changed to allow children born through gamete donation to access details identifying the donor. Drawing on trends in adoption law, the decision to abolish donor anonymity was strongly influenced by a discourse that asserted the 'child's right to personal identity'. Through examination of the donor anonymity debate in the public realm, while adopting a social constructionist approach, this article discusses how donor anonymity has been defined as a social problem that requires a regulative response. It focuses on the child's 'right to personal identity' claims, and discusses the genetic essentialism behind these claims. By basing its assumptions on an adoption analogy, United Kingdom law ascribes a social meaning to the genetic relatedness between gamete donors and the offspring.