More Severe Juror Sexual Abuse Strengthens Empathy for Child Sexual Abuse Victims: Meta-Analyses.

Jones et al. (2020) showed that compared to non-abused others, sexually abused jurors are more likely to empathize with child sexual abuse (CSA) victims, perceive victims as credible, and convict defendants in CSA mock trials. We extend these findings by investigating effects of sexually abused mock jurors' abuse on CSA victim empathy and trial judgments.

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.

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.

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 ( = 1,063).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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%).

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.

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.

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).

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Understanding children's use of secrecy in the context of eyewitness reports.

To investigate socioemotional influences on children's eyewitness accuracy, we examined children's reports for activities they were motivated to conceal. Forty-eight 3-6-year-old children participated in a standardized play session with their mothers. Half of the children were told by an experimenter not to play with certain toys, but did so at the urging of their mothers, who told their children to keep the play activities secret.

Effects of social support on children's eyewitness reports: a test of the underlying mechanism.

Research on children's eyewitness testimony demonstrates that interviewer-provided social support given during a mock forensic interview helps children resist an interviewer's misleading suggestions about past events. We proposed and tested 1 potential mechanism underlying support effects: "Resistance Efficacy," or children's perceived self-efficacy for resisting an interviewer's suggestions. Eighty-one 6- and 7-year-old children experienced a play event, then were interviewed about the event with misleading and specific questions.