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This paper reviews the four types of validity that make up Cook and Campbell's traditional approach for social science research in general and psychological research in particular: internal validity, statistical conclusion validity, external validity, and construct validity. The most important generalizability threat to the validity of jury research is not likely a selection main effect (i.e., the effect of relying solely on undergraduate mock jurors) but is more likely the interaction of sample with construct validity factors. Researchers who try to capture the trial process with experimental paradigms may find that undergraduate mock jurors react differently to those efforts than do more representative community samples. We illustrate these issues with the seven papers that make up this volume, and conclude by endorsing Diamond's call for a two-stage research process in which findings with samples of convenience gradually add more realistic trial processes and representative samples to confirm the initial findings and increase the research program's credibility.

This paper reports on an evaluation of a financial education-training program for residents of New York who had filed for bankruptcy. Over 400 individuals divided into three groups (trained debtors, untrained debtors, and non-debtors) completed identical questionnaires approximately three months apart. Trained debtors took the pretest before training and the post-test after training. Results revealed that trained debtors' financial knowledge increased after training compared with untrained and non-debtors. Trained debtors showed more negative attitudes towards unnecessary spending compared with the other two groups and reported less intention to buy than non-debtors reported. Self-reported behaviors showed significant changes in the desired direction for trained debtors' use of credit cards (i.e. number owned, purchases, and balance amount), paying bills, budgeting, and borrowing from predatory lenders. Implications for pending legislation are discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

According to the story model of Pennington and Hastie, jurors collect information at trial and modify it with general knowledge to create case stories. Schank and Ableson argue that human memory is organized to tell and understand stories. However, Finkel and Groscup questioned the use of manipulated, experimenter-constructed narratives to demonstrate the existence of multiple prototypical crime stories. We interviewed 76 jury eligible, death qualified citizens and asked them to imagine a first-degree murder scenario, describing the events that led to the killing. We coded the presence of dichotomous variables in the resulting stories and identified at least three shared story prototypes using cluster and profile analysis. We conclude that people do not store crime stories as simple prototypes and comment on the implications of this finding for legal decision-making. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Qualitative interviews exploring gender differences in perceptions of sexual harassment were conducted with 100 full-time St. Louis area employees. Women more than men reported that telling dirty/sexual jokes was a non-harassing behavior, qualified behaviors as harassing when they happened in the workplace, and considered behaviors as non-harassing when the man's intentions were not harmful. Men more than women reported that requesting a date was a non-harassing behavior, qualified behaviors as harassing when the woman did not welcome the behavior, and considered behaviors as non-harassing when they did not violate workplace norms. Logistic regression analysis predicted the respondent gender with 86% accuracy. Finally, concept mapping suggested that when women think about harassers they are concerned with power and social aptitude, while men seem to be more concerned about the responsibility and psychological adjustment of perpetrators of sexual harassment. When women think about victims of harassment they are concerned with a woman's assertiveness and work effectiveness, while men are more concerned with the psychological state of the woman and how provocative she is when they think about victims of sexual harassment.

Judicial decisions reviewed in this article indicate that courts have taken two disparate approaches to disputes over futility of treatment. To explore whether a consensus on medical futility is developing among hospitals, the authors conducted a nationwide survey of health care professionals at hospitals. Respondents assigned importance ratings to factors used in recent futility decisions made at their institutions. The resulting importance ratings showed significant variation by characteristics of the institution (comparing respondents from for-profit, not-for-profit, and government hospitals) and by profession of the respondent (comparing physicians and nurses). The respondents' judgments endorsed three distinct strategies for making futility decisions (i.e., emphasis on the patient's decision preferences, providing for the patient and family, and adhering to objective medical and social norms).

This article argues that program evaluation data may be useful to the courts when they are deciding First Amendment constitutional law disputes. Specifically, we focus on how program evaluation data, quantitative and qualitative, may be dispositive in dealing with two types of First Amendment cases—pornography and commercial speech. The different evaluative approaches that are warranted with each type of case are compared and contrasted. The different possible legal routes that program evaluation data may take to influence the outcome of constitutional law disputes determines the empirical type of approach to be utilized. Where pornography cases lend themselves more to social science data being used in trials, cases of commercial speech are more likely to use data at the appellate level. Social scientists interested in conducting legally relevant research should structure their research accordingly.

This Research Report presents an initial attempt to apply the theory of counterfactual thinking to study the cognitive processes that underlie judgments of negligence. Subjects reviewed a summary of an appellate case involving a work accident and listed all the ways in which the accident could have been undone (mutated). Participants' evaluations of the defendant's behavior were influenced by the ease of mutation of the negligent act and other mutations of the defendant's behavior, but not by the number of mutations of the plaintiffs conduct. Exploratory path analysis suggested that counterfactual thinking may have its greatest impact not as a direct influence on verdicts and damages, but rather as an indirect influence impacting verdicts through lower level judgments about the normality of the defendant's behavior and the standard of care. The results also suggest that contrary to the law, subjects base their negligence verdicts on assessments of normal care along with due care.

The purpose of this article is to further recent work in the psychology of jurisprudence. After summarizing the value positions that are central to a jurisprudence that emphasizes the role of law in the everyday lives of individuals, we examine the interaction between the tenets of that philosophy and the paradigmatic content of psycholegal research. We propose that one dominant perspective, information processing, assumes that legal actors are imperfect processors of social information and proceeds to document biases and propose ways for the law to minimize shortcomings in human cognition. After summarizing the emerging theory of psychological jurisprudence, we discuss the information processing paradigm in psychology and law, illustrating its contributions with three recent studies. Next, we present an empirical analysis of abstracts from the last 5 years of empirical research to demonstrate that there is a representative body of information processing research in psychology and law. Following this is an in-depth assessment of a sample of cognitive and social cognitive studies, detailing the scientific and normative issues that make up this literature. Finally, we conclude with some recommendations for jurisprudential theorists and psycholegal researchers which will integrate the philosophy of psychology and law with its empirical underpinnings.