International perspectives on procedural justice: Trust and respect matter even when body-worn cameras are present.

OBJECTIVE(S): We assessed the impact of body-worn cameras (BWCs) in two countries on perceptions of everyday encounters with police, independent of officer respectfulness and participants' preexisting trust in police. HYPOTHESES: We expected BWC presence, officer respectfulness, and preexisting trust in police to all significantly improve individuals' perceptions of a police encounter. We also expected interactions indicating that BWC presence and preexisting trust in police reduce the effect of officer respectfulness on perceptions of the encounter. METHOD: In each of three experimental studies, we measured participants' preexisting trust in police, and then presented participants with a vignette describing an encounter with a police officer in which officer respectfulness (respectful, disrespectful) and the presence/disclosure of a BWC (absent, present and disclosed by officer, present but undisclosed by officer) were independently manipulated. In Studies 1 (N = 422, Mage = 29 years, 73% women, 68% Australian) and 2 (N = 210, Mage = 19 years, 64% women, 59% Hispanic) in Australia and the United States, respectively, participants assumed the role of the driver in a traffic stop as they read the vignette. In study 3 (N = 504, Mage = 29 years, 72% women, 34% English), participants in Australia assumed the role of a citizen interacting with a police officer enforcing COVID-related restrictions. Participants then recorded their perceptions of procedural justice of and satisfaction with the encounter, legitimacy of the police, and willingness to co-operate with police. RESULTS: Across three studies and two countries, we found no support for the notion that BWC presence influenced people's perceptions of police-citizen interactions independent of officer respectfulness and preexisting trust. CONCLUSION: The effect of BWC presence, established in prior research, might operate via its effect on officer respectfulness. These findings underscore the importance of preexisting trust in police and respectful behavior by police officers, even in BWC-recorded encounters. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Jurors' Gender and Their Fear of False Child Sexual Abuse Accusations Are Related to Their Belief in Child Victims' Allegations.

We developed the first Fear of False Accusations scale, measuring the public's fear of personally being the target of untrue child sexual abuse allegations despite no actual wrongdoing as well as the fear of false allegations being a common problem in society. The scale was statistically reliable within a diverse sample of 964 participants. Several months later, in an ostensibly unrelated mock trial experiment, a subset of the participants assumed the role of mock juror and considered a criminal case involving an accusation of child sexual abuse. As predicted, (a) mock jurors with higher levels of fear were less likely than others to believe a specific child sexual abuse allegation (but did not differ in ratings of victim credibility nor responsibility), (b) men had significantly higher levels of this fear than did women, and (c) mediational analyses revealed that gender differences in fear partially explained men's tendency to believe the child abuse allegation less than women did. This research is important for developing the first empirically validated measure of fear of false accusation and linking this fear to perceptions of specific child sexual abuse allegations, and for finding a partial explanation for gender differences in mock jurors' reactions to child sexual abuse allegations.

A customized belonging intervention improves retention of socially disadvantaged students at a broad-access university.

Broad-access institutions play a democratizing role in American society, opening doors to many who might not otherwise pursue college. Yet these institutions struggle with persistence and completion. Do feelings of nonbelonging play a role, particularly for students from groups historically disadvantaged in higher education? Is belonging relevant to students' persistence-even when they form the numerical majority, as at many broad-access institutions? We evaluated a randomized intervention aimed at bolstering first-year students' sense of belonging at a broad-access university (N = 1,063). The intervention increased the likelihood that racial-ethnic minority and first-generation students maintained continuous enrollment over the next two academic years relative to multiple control groups. This two-year gain in persistence was mediated by greater feelings of social and academic fit one-year post-intervention. Results suggest that efforts to address belonging concerns at broad-access, majority-minority institutions can improve core academic outcomes for historically disadvantaged students at institutions designed to increase college accessibility.

Karen Jill Saywitz (1956-2018).

Presents an obituary for Karen Jill Saywitz, who passed on March 17, 2018. Saywitz devoted her life to advancing children's mental health and children's "voice" in the legal system. She completed internship and postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and became director of child and adolescent psychology at Harbor-UCLA. She returned to the main UCLA campus as professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. In February 2018, her research, clinical service, and advocacy on behalf of abused children and their families was recognized by the American Psychological Association's (APA) Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice (Division 37) with its highest honor, the Lifetime Advocacy Award. A month later, Karen lost her valiant fight against cancer. Through science, advocacy, and the translation of science into practice, Karen directly affected more child- and family-relevant laws, policies, and daily forensic practices than virtually anyone else in the field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The effects of body-worn camera footage and eyewitness race on jurors' perceptions of police use of force.

Police use of body-worn cameras (BWCs) is increasingly common in the USA. This article reports the results of one of the first experimental examinations of the effects of three BWC status conditions (absent, transcribed, viewed) and eyewitness race (Black, White) on mock jurors' case judgments, in a case in which a community member (defendant) was charged with resisting arrest but where the officer's use of force in conducting the arrest was controversial. Results provide evidence of significant main effects of both eyewitness race and BWC status. When the eyewitness supporting the defendant was White, mock jurors were less likely to vote the defendant guilty of resisting arrest, as well as more likely to consider the defendant credible and the officer culpable for the incident. In addition, when BWC footage of the arrest was viewed, compared with transcribed or absent, participants were less likely to vote the defendant guilty of resisting arrest, and also rated the officer's use of force less justifiable, and the officer more culpable and less credible. Follow-up analyses demonstrated that these relationships between BWC condition and case judgments were all mediated by moral outrage toward the officer.

Individual versus group decision making: Jurors' reliance on central and peripheral information to evaluate expert testimony.

To investigate dual-process persuasion theories in the context of group decision making, we studied low and high need-for-cognition (NFC) participants within a mock trial study. Participants considered plaintiff and defense expert scientific testimony that varied in argument strength. All participants heard a cross-examination of the experts focusing on peripheral information (e.g., credentials) about the expert, but half were randomly assigned to also hear central information highlighting flaws in the expert's message (e.g., quality of the research presented by the expert). Participants rendered pre- and post-group-deliberation verdicts, which were considered "scientifically accurate" if the verdicts reflected the strong (versus weak) expert message, and "scientifically inaccurate" if they reflected the weak (versus strong) expert message. For individual participants, we replicated studies testing classic persuasion theories: Factors promoting reliance on central information (i.e., central cross-examination, high NFC) improved verdict accuracy because they sensitized individual participants to the quality discrepancy between the experts' messages. Interestingly, however, at the group level, the more that scientifically accurate mock jurors discussed peripheral (versus central) information about the experts, the more likely their group was to reach the scientifically accurate verdict. When participants were arguing for the scientifically accurate verdict consistent with the strong expert message, peripheral comments increased their persuasiveness, which made the group more likely to reach the more scientifically accurate verdict.

Abuse Characteristics and Individual Differences Related to Disclosing Childhood Sexual, Physical, and Emotional Abuse and Witnessed Domestic Violence.

Many adult survivors of childhood abuse hide their victimization, avoiding disclosure that could identify perpetrators, end the abuse, and bring help to the victim. We surveyed 1,679 women undergraduates to understand disclosure of childhood sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, and, for the first time, witnessed domestic violence, which many consider to be emotionally abusive. A substantial minority of victims failed to ever disclose their sexual abuse (23%), physical abuse (34%), emotional abuse (20%), and witnessed domestic violence (29%). Overall, abuse-specific factors were better predictors of disclosure than individual-level characteristics. Disclosure of sexual abuse was related to experiencing more frequent abuse (by the same and by multiple perpetrators), being more worried about injury and more upset at the time of the abuse, and self-labeling as a victim of abuse. Disclosure of physical abuse was related to experiencing more frequent abuse (by the same and multiple perpetrators), being less emotionally close to the perpetrator, being older when the abuse ended, being more worried and upset, and self-labeling as a victim. Disclosure of emotional abuse was associated with being older when the abuse ended, and being more worried and upset. Disclosure was unrelated to victim demographic characteristics or defensive reactions (dissociative proneness, fantasy proneness, repressive coping style, and temporary forgetting), except that among physical and emotional abuse victims, repressors were less likely to disclose than non-repressors. Disclosure of witnessing domestic violence was not significantly related to any factors measured.

Religion-Related Child Maltreatment: A Profile of Cases Encountered by Legal and Social Service Agencies.

Religion can foster, facilitate, and be used to justify child maltreatment. Yet religion-related child abuse and neglect have received little attention from social scientists. We examined 249 cases of religion-related child maltreatment reported to social service agencies, police departments, and prosecutors' offices nationwide. We focused on cases involving maltreatment perpetrated by persons with religious authority, such as ministers and priests; the withholding of medical care for religious reasons; and abusive attempts to rid a child of supposed evil. By providing a descriptive statistical profile of the major features of these cases, we illustrate how these varieties of religion-related child maltreatment occur, who the victims and perpetrators are, and how religion-related child abuse and neglect are reported and processed by the social service and criminal justice systems. We end with a call for greater research attention to these important offenses against children.

Stereotype threat and racial differences in citizens' experiences of police encounters.

We conducted 2 studies to investigate how cultural stereotypes that depict Blacks as criminals affect the way Blacks experience encounters with police officers, expecting that such encounters induce Blacks to feel stereotype threat (i.e., concern about being judged and treated unfairly by police because of the stereotype). In Study 1, we asked Black and White participants to report how they feel when interacting with police officers in general. As predicted, Blacks, but not Whites, reported concern that police officers stereotype them as criminals simply because of their race. In addition, this effect was found for Black men but not Black women. In Study 2, we asked Black and White men to imagine a specific police encounter and assessed potential downstream consequences of stereotype threat. Consistent with Study 1, Black but not White men anticipated feeling stereotype threat in the hypothetical police encounter. Further, racial differences in anticipated threat translated into racial differences in anticipated anxiety, self-regulatory efforts, and behavior that is commonly perceived as suspicious by police officers. By demonstrating that Blacks might expect to be judged and treated unfairly by police because of the negative stereotype of Black criminality, this research extends stereotype threat theory to the new domain of criminal justice encounters. It also has practical implications for understanding how the stereotype could ironically contribute to bias-based policing and racial disparities in the justice system.

The Influence of a Juvenile's Abuse History on Support for Sex Offender Registration.

We investigated whether and how a juvenile's history of experiencing sexual abuse affects public perceptions of juvenile sex offenders in a series of 5 studies. When asked about juvenile sex offenders in an abstract manner (Studies 1 and 2), the more participants (community members and undergraduates) believed that a history of being sexually abused as a child causes later sexually abusive behavior, the less likely they were to support sex offender registration for juveniles. Yet when participants considered specific sexual offenses, a juvenile's history of sexual abuse was not considered to be a mitigating factor. This was true when participants considered a severe sexual offense (forced rape; Study 3 and Study 4) and a case involving less severe sexual offenses (i.e., statutory rape), when a juvenile's history of sexual abuse backfired and was used as an aggravating factor, increasing support for registering the offender (Study 3 and Study 5). Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

Explaining gender differences in jurors' reactions to child sexual assault cases.

In three experiments, we investigated the influence of juror, victim, and case factors on mock jurors' decisions in several types of child sexual assault cases (incest, day care, stranger abduction, and teacher-perpetrated abuse). We also validated and tested the ability of several scales measuring empathy for child victims, children's believability, and opposition to adult/child sex, to mediate the effect of jurors' gender on case judgments. Supporting a theoretical model derived from research on the perceived credibility of adult rape victims, women compared to men were more empathic toward child victims, more opposed to adult/child sex, more pro-women, and more inclined to believe children generally. In turn, women (versus men) made more pro-victim judgments in hypothetical abuse cases; that is, attitudes and empathy generally mediated this juror gender effect that is pervasive in this literature. The experiments also revealed that strength of case evidence is a powerful factor in determining judgments, and that teen victims (14 years old) are blamed more for sexual abuse than are younger children (5 years old), but that perceptions of 5 and 10 year olds are largely similar. Our last experiment illustrated that our findings of mediation generalize to a community member sample.

Attitudinal and individual differences influence perceptions of mock child sexual assault cases involving gay defendants.

Many people hold negative attitudes and stereotypes about gay men, including the stereotype that gay men are likely to be child molesters. This article explored the implications of this stereotype for judgments made in a hypothetical legal case involving child sexual abuse accusations against a male teacher by either a male or female victim. Mock jurors who held the most anti-gay attitudes and those who endorsed the stereotype of gay men as child molesters made the most pro-prosecution judgments in scenarios involving gay defendants. A new scale (the Stereotypes about Gays and Child Abuse scale) was developed to assess the extent to which participants endorsed the stereotype of gay men as being likely to sexually abuse children. This scale was a stronger predictor of case judgments than existing, more general scales measuring biases against homosexuality.

Trauma severity and defensive emotion-regulation reactions as predictors of forgetting childhood trauma.

Using a retrospective survey, we studied a sample of 1,679 college women to determine whether reports of prior forgetting of childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse, and other traumas could be explained by trauma severity and individual differences in the use of defensive emotion-regulation reactions (i.e., repressive coping, dissociation, and fantasy proneness). Among victims of physical abuse (but not sexual abuse or other types of trauma), those who experienced severe abuse and used defensive reactions were sometimes more likely to report temporary forgetting of abuse but other times less likely to report forgetting. We also found unanticipated main effects of trauma severity on temporary forgetting. Our results provide an understanding of victims' experiences of forgetting by demonstrating the importance of considering unique effects of trauma type, different aspects of trauma severity, and victims' defensive reactions to trauma.

Gender differences in jurors' perceptions of infanticide involving disabled and non-disabled infant victims.

OBJECTIVES: The present study investigated the influence of juror gender and infant victim disability on jurors' reactions to infanticide cases. METHODS: Participants (men and women undergraduates) read a summary of a mock trial involving alleged father-perpetrated infanticide. The infant was described as severely mentally disabled or as not disabled. Participants completed a series of case-related judgments (e.g., guilt; sentence; and empathy, sympathy, and similarity toward the defendant and victim). RESULTS: There were pervasive gender differences such that compared to men, women mock jurors rendered more guilty verdicts, perceived the father/defendant as having greater intent to kill his infant, and felt less similar to the defendant. Compared to men, women also believed the father was more responsible and the pneumonia was less responsible for the infant's death, had less sympathy and empathy for the defendant, endorsed more negative beliefs about the father, and were more likely to believe the infant was a unique person. Mediational analyses revealed that these statistically significant effects were explained, in part, by gender differences in attitudes toward the defendant. Further, whether the infant victim was portrayed as severely disabled (versus developmentally normal) had little effect on central case judgments such as verdict, but jurors who believed the infant was severely disabled gave significantly shorter sentences to the defendant, were less likely to perceive the defendant as mentally ill, and felt significantly less empathy for and similarity to the infant victim. CONCLUSIONS: Although juror gender consistently predicted juror's judgments, there were fewer effects of disability status. Even so, bias against disabled infants manifested for several dependant variables. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: This research can inform legal professionals about the potential for bias in juror decision-making, and in turn, help facilitate fairness and justice for the youngest and most vulnerable victims of child abuse.

Psychological mechanisms underlying support for juvenile sex offender registry laws: prototypes, moral outrage, and perceived threat.

In three studies, we investigated support for applying sex offender registry laws to juveniles. Family law attorneys supported registry laws less for juveniles than for adults. Laypeople and prosecutors supported juvenile and adult sex offender registration equally--even though they perceived juveniles as generally less threatening than adults (Study 1)--because most people spontaneously envision a severe sex offender prototype regardless of offender age (Study 2). People are less supportive of registry laws, however, when they envision less severe prototypes spontaneously (Study 2) or when induced to do so (Study 3). Effects of offender age, offender prototypes, and offense severity were mediated by perceptions of threat posed by the juvenile sex offender (i.e., utilitarian concerns). The effect of offense severity was also mediated by moral outrage (i.e., retributive concerns).

Jurors' perceptions of juvenile defendants: the influence of intellectual disability, abuse history, and confession evidence.

Understanding jurors' perceptions of juvenile defendants has become increasingly important as more and more juvenile cases are being tried in adult criminal court rather than family or juvenile court. Intellectual disability and child maltreatment are overrepresented among juvenile delinquents, and juveniles (particularly disabled juveniles) are at heightened risk for falsely confessing to crimes. In two mock trial experiments, we examined the effects of disability, abuse history, and confession evidence on jurors' perceptions of a juvenile defendant across several different crime scenarios. Abused juveniles were treated more leniently than nonabused juveniles only when the juvenile's crime was motivated by self-defense against the abuser. Jurors used disability as a mitigating factor, making more lenient judgments for a disabled than a nondisabled juvenile. Jurors also completely discounted a coerced confession for a disabled juvenile, but not for a nondisabled juvenile. In fact, compared with when it was portrayed as voluntary, jurors generally discounted a juvenile's coerced confession. Implications for public policy and directions for future research are discussed.

Emotional evidence and jurors' judgments: the promise of neuroscience for informing psychology and law.

This article is a review of psychological and neuroscience research addressing how juror decision making is influenced by emotion elicited from potentially disturbing evidence such as gruesome autopsy photographs, victim impact statements, and information about a defendant's tragic personal history presented as mitigating evidence. We review (a) converging evidence suggesting that the presence versus absence of such evidence results in more punitive juror judgments, (b) social cognition theories that provide potential explanations for these effects, and (c) neuroscience research aimed at understanding the role of emotion in moral judgments by identifying how brain activity is affected by emotion-eliciting stimuli. We argue that neuroimaging evidence showing that emotional stimuli cause heightened emotion and decreased effortful cognitive processing is relevant in understanding jurors' increased punitiveness after being exposed to emotional evidence, and in turn relevant to debates about the admissibility of emotional evidence in courts of law. Ultimately, we argue for more ecologically valid psychological research to clarify these important issues.

Effects of defendant sexual orientation on jurors' perceptions of child sexual assault.

We examined mock jurors' reactions to a sexual abuse case involving a male teacher and a 10-year-old child. Because gay men are sometimes stereotyped as child molesters, we portrayed defendant sexual orientation as either gay or straight and the victim as either a boy or girl. Jurors made more pro-prosecution decisions in cases involving a gay versus straight defendant, particularly when the victim was a boy. In boy-victim cases, jurors' emotional feelings of moral outrage toward the defendant mediated these effects. On average, women jurors were more pro-prosecution than were men. Results have implications for understanding social perceptions of cross- and same-gender child sexual abuse and juror decision making in child sexual assault cases perpetrated by homosexual and heterosexual men.

Jurors' perceptions of adolescent sexual assault victims who have intellectual disabilities.

Children and adolescents with intellectual disabilities are especially likely to be sexually abused. Even so, their claims are not likely to be heard in court, possibly because people assume that jurors will not believe them. We tested this assumption in a mock-trial study in which 160 men and women watched videotaped excerpts from an actual trial. As predicted, when the 16-year-old sexual assault victim was portrayed as "mildly mentally retarded" instead of as "having average intelligence," jurors were more likely to vote guilty and had more confidence in the defendant's guilt; considered the victim to be more credible and the defendant to be less credible as witnesses; and rated the victim as more honest, less capable of fabricating the sexual abuse accusation, and less likely to have fabricated the sexual abuse accusation. Men and women were affected similarly by the disability manipulation, but women were generally more pro-prosecution in their case judgments and perceptions than were men. Finally, jurors who had more liberal views toward persons with disabilities were more likely than other jurors to make pro-prosecution judgments on measures of guilt. Implications for psychological theory and the law are discussed.

Explaining the forgetting and recovery of abuse and trauma memories: possible mechanisms.

Much attention has been focused on memories of abuse that are allegedly forgotten or repressed then recovered. By retrospectively surveying more than 1,400 college women, the authors investigated (a) the frequency with which temporary forgetting is reported for child sexual abuse experiences as opposed to other childhood abuse and traumas and (b) exactly how victims characterize their forgetting experiences in terms of various competing cognitive mechanisms. Rates of forgetting were similar among victims who experienced sexual abuse, physical abuse, and multiple types of traumas. Victims of other types of childhood traumas (e.g., car accidents) reported less forgetting than victims of childhood sexual abuse or multiple types of trauma. Most victims' characterizations of their forgetting experiences were not indicative of repression in the classic Freudian sense but instead suggested other more common mechanisms, such as directed forgetting and relabeling. The implications of these findings for psychological theory, clinical practice, and law are discussed.