Psychology, Public Policy, and Law

Jurors’ discussions of a defendant’s history of child abuse and alcohol abuse in capital sentencing deliberations.
We tested a novel theoretical model explaining the psychological processes underlying jurors’ discussions about a defendant’s history of child abuse and alcohol abuse in a capital case. We coded the extent to which jurors used child abuse and alcohol abuse as mitigating factors, as aggravating factors, or argued that they should be ignored. Relying on attribution theory, we coded the extent to which jurors rendered controllable or uncontrollable and stable or unstable attributions regarding the defendant’s history of child abuse and alcohol abuse. Jurors were more likely to argue that child abuse and alcohol abuse should not be used as mitigators or to even use them against the defendant as aggravators than they were to use them as mitigators. Jurors made more controllable than uncontrollable attributions regarding child abuse and more stable than unstable attributions regarding both child abuse and alcohol abuse. The more jurors supported the death penalty, the more they argued to discount child abuse and alcohol abuse as mitigators or use them as aggravators and the more controllable and stable attributions they made. Political orientation predicted discussions and attributions about alcohol abuse, but not child abuse. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
Rehabilitating criminal justice policy and practice.
For over 30 years, criminal justice policy has been dominated by a “get tough” approach to offenders. Increasing punitive measures have failed to reduce criminal recidivism and instead have led to a rapidly growing correctional system that has strained government budgets. The inability of reliance on official punishment to deter crime is understandable within the context of the psychology of human conduct. However, this knowledge was largely ignored in the quest for harsher punishment. A better option for dealing with crime is to place greater effort on the rehabilitation of offenders. In particular, programs that adhere to the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model have been shown to reduce offender recidivism by up to 35%. The model describes: a) who should receive services (moderate and higher risk cases), b) the appropriate targets for rehabilitation services (criminogenic needs), and c) the powerful influence strategies for reducing criminal behavior (cognitive social learning). Although the RNR model is well known in the correctional field it is less well known, but equally relevant, for forensic, clinical, and counseling psychology. The paper summarizes the empirical base to RNR along with implications for research, policy, and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
Complainant behavioral tone, ambivalent sexism, and perceptions of sexual harassment.
Previous research has examined the impact of the law on decisions made about social sexual interactions in the workplace in the context of a variety of individual difference variables including gender of the observer and sexist attitudes, as well as situational factors including legal standard and prior exposure to aggressive and submissive complainants. The current study continued this line of inquiry by testing whether hostile or benevolent sexist attitudes behaved differently under manipulated exposure to aggressive and submissive complainants. Full-time workers watched 1 videotape in which aggressive, submissive, or neutral (i.e., businesslike) women complained that male coworkers sexually harassed them; then, participants viewed a second complainant who always acted in a neutral behavioral tone. In the first case, participants high in hostile sexism who took a reasonable person perspective (but not those with a reasonable woman point of view) and all men who viewed an aggressive complainant found less evidence of harassment. With the second set of allegations, female workers who were exposed to a submissive complainant in the first case found less evidence of harassment against the neutral complainant, suggesting that exposure to a submissive complainant triggered some type of victim blaming in female workers. Policy and training implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
A cognitive and social psychological analysis of disclosure laws and call for mortgage counseling to prevent predatory lending.
The federal government’s primary method of protecting consumers from “predatory lending” has been to enact disclosure laws that were supposed to enable consumers to make informed decisions. This article contends that notwithstanding these disclosure laws, unscrupulous mortgage brokers and lenders have been able to take advantage of certain described cognitive and social psychological phenomena to induce borrowers to enter into predatory loans, and argues that disclosures alone—even the recently revised disclosure forms—are inadequate. To better empower consumers to make informed decisions on their home loans, this article proposes and details a mortgage counseling intervention that contains both “in-person” and interactive computer counseling as a necessary supplement to disclosure laws. Designed properly, such an intervention would more effectively address the cognitive and social psychological barriers to rational decision making than disclosure alone. The article also examines the likely costs and benefits of the proposed mortgage counseling intervention in light of Illinois experience with mortgage counseling and urges policymakers to consider not only the costs of implementing mortgage counseling but also the costs of not providing for this counseling. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - Vol 16, Iss 1