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Psychedelic drugs are currently being investigated for their potential to facilitate a variety of long-lasting psychological changes. One area of psychological functioning that has yet to be systematically investigated in psychedelic research regards aesthetic experiences. This is surprising given the notable acute changes in perception induced by the drugs as well as the wealth of anecdotal reports of individuals reporting increased engagement in aesthetic experiences after psychedelic use. The current study was designed to address this gap in the literature by administering a validated measure of aesthetic experience one-week before, one-week after, and one-month after participants (N = 54) attended an ayahuasca retreat center. Participants also completed surveys indexing the extent to which they endorsed mystical-type experiences, awe, and ego dissolution during their ayahuasca sessions to identify potential predictors of long-term change. We found that compared to baseline, participants exhibited increased levels of aesthetic experience at both follow-ups. Measures of acute drug effects did not predict changes in aesthetic experience. Although the study was limited by an open-label design, the results support anecdotal reports regarding changes in aesthetic experience after psychedelic use and provide important groundwork for future study.

In 2019, the inaugural editorial of

Wrongful convictions represent a grave injustice. The innocent are punished, the guilty go free, and the postmortems that attend their occasional discovery typically reveal some shocking combination of incompetence, indifference, and malfeasance. Escaping notice, however, are myriad mundane influences that usually have negligible effects but which, like a feather falling on a balance, can sometimes tip the scale. In this chapter we highlight effects that could nudge the innocent onto paths that might ultimately lead to wrongful conviction. We begin by considering how the innocent are disadvantaged by an unwarranted sense of invulnerability. Next, we explore how police encounters and investigative stops can initially entangle the innocent in a criminal investigation. We then discuss how police may come to target an innocent suspect through the effects of expectancies, both justified and unjustified, and which may or may not operate outside awareness. We conclude by discussing future research directions.

There are numerous indications that the field of psychology–law has grown tremendously over the past few decades. Some of the more prominent indicators include the use of psychology–law research in influential court cases, the law’s recognition that psychologists can serve as expert witnesses on mental health issues, the development of national and international professional organizations devoted to law and psychology/psychiatry, and numerous professional journals devoted to psychology–law topics. This chapter focuses on another indicator of the growth of psychology–law—training for a career in the psychology–law field. After describing the long relationship between the fields of psychology and law, this chapter discusses the varied roles for psychologists in the psychology–law field. Then, the chapter discusses the educational and training opportunities for those interested in psychology–law, including opportunities at the undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral levels.

Little empirical research has examined postconviction processes associated with the unique legal events of release from incarceration and official exoneration. Across various models, we tested the influence of risk factors associated with wrongful convictions (false confessions, faulty or misleading forensic evidence, inadequate legal defense, mistaken eyewitness identifications, official misconduct, and perjury) and relevant alternative factors (e.g., presence of DNA, false guilty pleas, and race) on the exoneration process, with a particular focus on the role of false confessions.We expected that all risk factors would be meaningfully associated with the duration between wrongful conviction and release but that false confessions would be associated with longer delays between release and exoneration and would remain a meaningful predictor of the delay even when accounting for alternative factors.Using data from documented exonerations of murder, attempted murder, and accessory to murder in the National Registry of Exonerations (N = 1,074), we examined the association of risk factors and alternative predictors with the time between exonerees' wrongful conviction and release from incarceration and the time between release from incarceration and official exoneration.Overall, five of the six risk factors predicted the time between wrongful conviction and release from incarceration, but of the risk factors, only false confessions predicted the time between release and exoneration (d = 0.28; 95% CI [0.13, 0.43]), even when we controlled for relevant alternative factors (d = 0.29; 95% CI [0.14, 0.43]).Exonerations that involve false confessions are associated with delays in the critical window between innocent people's release and official exoneration-a time during which these innocent people are precluded from accessing reintegration aids and may struggle to find housing and employment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Being a victim of a violent crime is a traumatic experience. Sexual victimization, in particular, may be powerful enough to change presumably stable worldviews like just world beliefs. Across two large samples, we examined the influence of sexual victimization on just world beliefs. Results of Study 1 ( N = 727) indicated that victims of sexual aggression had significantly lower levels of just world beliefs compared to nonvictims. Other researchers have claimed that sexual aggression is a uniquely intense traumatic event. Therefore, in a second study, we examined (a) whether just world belief endorsement was associated with the frequency of victimization, and (b) whether sexual aggression was unique in its effect on just world belief endorsement compared to other crimes such as physical assault. Results of Study 2 ( N = 2,011) indicated that multiple incidents of victimization did not meaningfully impact just world beliefs compared to a single instance and just world belief endorsement was not significantly different across victims of sexual aggression, robbery, physical assault, or arson. An exploratory analysis, however, indicated there was a significant difference in victims’ behavior such that victims of sexual aggression were the least likely to have reported the crime. We end with a discussion of how the present research can advance our understanding of just world belief ideology and discuss the practical implications for professionals working with and studying victims of violent crimes.

False confessions are a contributing factor in almost 30% of DNA exonerations in the United States. Similar problems have been documented all over the world. We present a novel framework to highlight the processes through which innocent people, once misidentified as suspects, experience cumulative disadvantages that culminate in pernicious consequences. The cumulative-disadvantage framework details how the innocent suspect’s naivete and the interrogator’s presumption of guilt trigger a process that can lead to false confession, the aftereffects of which spread to corrupt evidence gathering, bias forensic analysis, and virtually ensure wrongful convictions at trial or through pressured false guilty pleas. The framework integrates nascent research underscoring the enduring effects of the accumulated disadvantages postconviction and even after exoneration. We synthesize findings from psychological science, corroborating naturalistic evidence, and relevant legal precedents to explain how an innocent suspect’s disadvantages can accumulate through the actions of law enforcement, forensic examiners, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, juries, and appeals courts. We conclude with prescribed research directions that can lead to empirically driven reforms to address the gestalt of the multistage process.

Individuals often tend to irrationally blame victims for their plight. This research incorporated a bounded rationality framework to examine first-person perspectives (rather than third-person) of both victims’ and nonvictims’ perceptions and judgments of acquaintance and stranger sexual violence. Upon completing individual difference measures, including a just-world belief assessment, participants ( N = 296) were randomly assigned to read a scenario in which the vignette victim was either acquainted with or had no prior relationship with the perpetrator. Then, taking the perspective of the vignette victim, participants offered four judgments: the likelihood of reporting the crime, self-blame, perceived control, and sympathy expected from others. Results showed that instances of acquaintance sexual violence were judged more negatively than instances of stranger sexual violence. Moreover, participants who had previously experienced sexual violence reported more negative judgments than nonvictims (except for sympathy expected from others). An exploratory path analysis indicated that as nonvictims’, but not victims’, just-world beliefs became stronger, they indicated a higher willingness to report the crime, perceived more control over the situation, and expected more sympathy from others. We end with a discussion of how the present research can advance our understanding of sexual violence by using a bounded rationality framework and discuss the practical implications that the observed effects have for professionals in the legal system, outside observers, and victims themselves.

Author(s): Mindthoff, Amelia; Evans, Jacqueline R; Perez, Gissel; Woestehoff, Skye A; Olaguez, Alma P; Klemfuss, J Zoe; Normile, Christopher J; Scherr, Kyle C; Carlucci, Marianna E; Carol, Rolando N; Meissner, Christian A; Michael, Stephen W; Russano, Melissa B; Stocks, Eric L; Vallano, Jonathan P; Woody, William Douglas

Alcohol-intoxicated suspects’ confessions are admissible in U.S. courts; however, it is unknown how jurors evaluate such confessions. Study 1 assessed potential jurors’ perceptions of intoxication in interrogative contexts. Many respondents were unaware that questioning intoxicated suspects and presenting subsequent confessions in court are legal, and respondents generally reported they would rely less on intoxicated than sober confessions. In Study 2, potential jurors read a case about a defendant who had confessed or not while sober or intoxicated. Participants who read about an intoxicated defendant perceived the interrogation as more inappropriate and the defendant as more cognitively impaired than did participants who read about a sober defendant, and as a result, they were less likely to convict. Furthermore, intoxicated confessions influenced conviction decisions to a lesser extent than did sober confessions. Findings suggest that investigators might consider abstaining from interrogating intoxicated suspects or else risk jurors finding confessions unconvincing in court.

Economic inequality is a pervasive and growing source of social problems such as poor health, crime, psychological disorders, and lack of trust in others. U.S. citizens across the political spectrum both underperceive the extent of economic inequality and would prefer to live in a society with much less inequality than both exist in reality and in their subjective estimations. Across multiple studies, we examined the ability of “moral foundations” to predict people’s desire to reduce economic inequality (while also replicating research showing widespread desire for a more equal society). Moral foundations endorsements consistently predicted desire to reduce inequality even when controlling for other relevant factors (e.g., political orientation). In addition, requests for donations to an organization focused on reducing economic inequality were able to elicit more money when the requests largely appealed to the type of moral foundations endorsed by participants.

People are hesitant to fully support reintegration efforts (e.g., opportunities to receive psychological counseling, career counseling, job training, housing assistance, educational opportunities, financial compensation) to help exonerees wrongfully convicted of a crime. However, underlying reasons motivating people’s hesitancy remain unaddressed. This research examined the influence of being wrongfully convicted of a race stereotypic-consistent crime on people’s judgments of exonerees’ culpability and willingness to support reintegration programs. Using an experimental design, participants were randomly assigned to read a news story that depicted an African-American or White male who was exonerated after being wrongfully convicted of assault or embezzlement. Participants then offered their culpability judgments (i.e., their belief in the exoneree’s guilt and confidence in that belief) and willingness to support reintegration services. Participants were less confident of the exoneree’s innocence and less supportive of psychological counseling services when the exoneree was a White, compared to African-American, male wrongfully convicted of the race stereotypic-consistent crime of embezzlement. An exploratory conditional mediation analysis indicated that less confidence in the exoneree’s innocence after being wrongfully convicted of a race stereotypic-consistent crime was, in turn, associated with people’s hesitancy to support psychological counseling for the exoneree. Basic and applied implications to overcome people’s hesitancy to support reintegration efforts for exonerees are discussed.

Research has demonstrated that priming analytic thinking reduces adherence to religious ideas. The current studies examined whether analytic thinking primes can also increase acceptance of secular ...

Crime dramas have become a popular part of media culture, but research examining their influence on juror decision-making is in its infancy. This research examined the influences of crime drama viewing frequency, individuals' degree of engagement (engaged or non-engaged) with a crime drama, and type of evidence (forensic, eyewitness, or both) on mock jurors' verdicts. Results indicated that, among engaged participants who were presented with forensic or eyewitness only evidence, frequent crime drama viewers offered more confident not guilty verdicts compared to infrequent viewers. However, this evidentiary skepticism between frequent and infrequent viewers vanished when participants engaged with the show and were presented with both types of evidence. Among participants not induced to engage with the crime drama, these patterns were very different—non-engaged participants who were presented with eyewitness only or both types of evidence offered more confident not guilty verdicts the more frequently they watched crime dramas. Yet, non-engaged viewers presented with forensic only evidence rendered similar levels of guilt verdicts regardless of their crime drama viewing frequency. Implications for juror decision-making research and applied implications for the legal system are discussed.

In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a controversial ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, which required police to inform suspects, prior to custodial interrogation, of their constitutional rights to silence and to counsel. In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Miranda, we present a psychological analysis of the Court’s ruling. We show how the Court’s assumption that the provisions of the Miranda ruling would enable suspects to make knowing, intelligent, and voluntary decisions regarding whether to invoke or waive their constitutional rights has not been borne out by scientific research. Hence, we argue that even well-adjusted, intelligent adults are at risk of succumbing to police pressure during custodial interrogation. We conclude with policy implications and directions for future Miranda research.

Most Western democracies recognize the right to remain silent as operationalized through the warning-and-waiver requirements introduced by the US Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona (1966). This requirement stands as a symbol of fairness in criminal justice. Yet beginning with the empirical fact that very few suspects invoke their rights, research casts doubt as to what protection, if any, it affords. This chapter reviews a number of problems—namely, that many people, especially juveniles and adults under stress, have limited comprehension of these rights; that police use tactics designed to elicit waivers, often casting doubt as to voluntariness; that innocent people routinely waive their rights because they feel no need for protection; that these rights are triggered only when a suspect is in “custody,” leaving many individuals to be questioned without warning who do not feel free to leave; and that many suspects fear that their silence would be used against them, an adverse inference they are specifically warned about in the UK. A number of reforms are proposed to protect individual suspects by regulating the process of interrogation and requiring that it be recorded in its entirety.

In this editorial, the authors note that steady submission rate and a rejection rate that hovers at 80%, indicates the journal is flourishing and provides them with the fortunate opportunity to make an excellent journal even better. To that end, they describe three initiatives they are working on and explain the changes readers can expect as they begin to implement them in the journal. Specifically, these initiatives include: (1) promoting transparency, openness, and reproducibility in published research; (2) improving author-reviewer fit; and (3) expanding the diversity of journal content and decision makers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

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' naive 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.

Summary Suspects' decisions to waive or invoke interrogation rights have considerable impact on whether subsequent interrogations ensue, self-incriminating information is offered, and in the case of innocent suspects, wrongful convictions occur. Although interrogation warnings differ in their text characteristics, empirically examining the influence of these text differences on suspects' ability to process and comprehend their rights has largely been neglected, which is especially problematic for vulnerable populations. Using a novel approach, we monitored the eye movements of 60 juveniles as they silently read different versions of Miranda warnings in order to investigate the relationship among text characteristics, processing difficulty, and comprehension problems. Results indicated that text characteristics were associated with processing difficulties and these processing difficulties were strongly correlated with comprehension of the warnings. Along with advancing basic and applied research programs, this approach can inform policy decisions and benefit vulnerable populations whose comprehension of interrogation rights is encumbered by legalese.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A recurring theme in the psychological literature is that the self-fulfilling effect of stereotypes can accumulate across perceivers. This article provides the first empirical support for this long-standing hypothesis. In three experiments (Ns = 123-241), targets more strongly confirmed a stereotype as the number of perceivers who held stereotypic expectations about them increased. A fourth experiment (N = 121) showed that new perceivers judged targets according to the stereotypic behaviors they had previously been channeled to adopt, an effect that even occurred among perceivers who were privy to the fact that targets' behavior had been shaped by the actions of others. The authors discuss ways in which these effects may contribute to group inequalities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Research has identified numerous factors that influence suspects during police interrogations. However, the dynamics between individuals' physiologic reactivity and their confession decision making is in its infancy. This research sought to advance the interrogation literature by examining the relationships among different interrogation tactics, suspects' resistance to confess, and their physiologic reactivity during a mock interrogation. After manipulating innocence and guilt, participants (N = 154) were accused and interrogated using either a minimization or false evidence tactic. Participants' physiologic reactivity was operationalized using their systolic blood pressure, and confession resistance was quantified as the number of times participants refused to confess. Results demonstrated that participants exhibited more physiologic reactivity after being confronted with false evidence ploys than minimization. Furthermore, innocent participants resisted confessing more than guilty participants, but innocents confronted with false evidence resisted confessing to a greater extent than innocents confronted with minimization. Moreover, a moderated-mediation analysis indicated that although innocents resisted confessing more when confronted with false evidence than those confronted with minimization, these innocents sustained a significantly higher level of physiologic reactivity. The results of the conditional indirect relationship suggest that innocents who are confronted with false evidence may resist the most but at a cost-their greater resistance may exhaust them and undermine subsequent decision making. These results offer support for reforms aimed at reducing the length of interrogations and the use of interrogation tactics that unnecessarily increase false confession rates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

This research examined whether factors present during police interrogations reduce the effectiveness of the prophylactic safeguards afforded to suspects through their Miranda rights. Specifically, this research tested whether stress interacted with other factors present during the Miranda administration process to influence individuals’ Miranda comprehension and willingness to sign a waiver. Whereas Experiment 1 tested whether the way Miranda was administered could exacerbate the effect of stress on suspects’ ability to comprehend Miranda, Experiment 2 examined whether stress could interact with the way a waiver was described to influence suspects’ willingness to sign a waiver. During Experiment 1, participants either were or were not accused of cheating and then administered four Miranda comprehension instruments in either an oral or a written fashion. Although the finding that stress undermined participants’ ability to comprehend Miranda was replicated, there was no evidence that stress and the way Miranda was administered interacted to influence participants’ ability to comprehend Miranda. During Experiment 2, participants were told that their behavior of sharing answers was either a serious or not a serious violation and then were given a waiver to sign that was described as being either a formality or important. Results indicated that participants who were told the waiver was a formality were more willing to sign the waiver compared to participants who were told the waiver was important. However, there was no evidence that stress and the way the waiver was described interacted to influence participants’ willingness to sign the waiver. Potential reasons for why an interaction effect was not observed in either experiment are offered. The dissertation ends with a discussion of the implications of these findings and limitations of the two experiments.

Social reality can be created through self-fulfilling prophecies and perceptual biases. A selffulfilling prophecy is a false belief that leads to its own fulfillment. A perceptual bias occurs when an individual believes that her or his inaccurate expectation about another has been confirmed to a greater extent than it has in reality. Although research findings bearing on these processes are robust, these effects are typically small. Nonetheless, this does not mean that self-fulfilling prophecy and perceptual bias effects are always small. There are conditions under which such effects have the potential to be powerful. The current experiment tested this possibility by addressing two main goals: 1) to examine if expectancy effects accumulate across perceivers and 2) to examine whether unfavorable or favorable expectancies produce more powerful cumulative expectancy effects. Sessions were run with groups of two perceivers and one target (N=145 groups). Whereas some perceivers were induced with either an unfavorable (i.e., hostile) or a favorable (i.e., friendly) expectancy, other perceivers were not induced with any expectancy. All perceivers then interacted with a target in a reaction time task, during which they used a noise weapon on an alternating basis. After the reaction time task, participants’ impressions of each other were measured. The average noise level that targets administered to perceivers was the dependent variable used to test for self-fulfilling prophecy effects. Perceivers’ impressions of targets was the dependent variable used to test for perceptual bias effects. Results failed to support the occurrence of a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, perceptual bias effects were observed – perceivers induced with an unfavorable expectancy judged targets’ as significantly more hostile than perceivers who were not induced with an unfavorable expectancy. However, further analyses indicated that perceptual bias effects did not accumulate across perceivers. Possible implications and some limitations of the experiment are discussed.

The current research examined the ability of moral foundations to predict candidate choice in the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election across three studies. Results indicated that endorsement of moral foundations predicted voting outcomes beyond that predicted by important demographic variables that are traditionally included in election forecasts and research. When moral foundations were collapsed into two variables (individualizing and binding foundations), increased endorsement of the individualizing foundations consistently predicted support for Barack Obama, and increased endorsement of the binding foundations consistently predicted support for Mitt Romney. The most reliable unique predictor of candidate choice among the five separate foundations was purity, which strongly motivated support for Mitt Romney. Additionally, increased endorsement of the fairness foundation uniquely predicted support for Barack Obama. The effects observed across the three studies demonstrate a direct relationship between moral foundations endorsements and candidate choice. Implications for those using moral appeals in their political influence strategies are discussed.

Suspects' decisions to waive or invoke their interrogation rights can have a considerable impact on their eventual legal fate. Although innocent and guilty suspects show differences in waiver rates, research has yet to examine whether innocent and guilty individuals' waiver decisions are differentially influenced by dispositional and situational factors. The current research examined the relationship among a dispositional factor (just world beliefs), a situational factor (social proof pressures-i.e., influencing others to believe that certain behaviors are normative) and innocent and guilty individuals' waiver decisions. Social proof pressures influenced the preinterrogation decisions of guilty individuals holding strong just world beliefs but not guilty individuals holding weak just world beliefs. However, social proof pressures influenced the preinterrogation decisions of innocent individuals holding weak just world beliefs but not innocent individuals holding strong just world beliefs. Results also indicated that strong just world beliefs are associated with attenuated stress responses to an accusation among innocent individuals but exacerbated stress responses among guilty individuals, thereby helping to explain why guilty and innocent individuals are differentially influenced by situational and dispositional factors. The theoretical and applied implications of these effects are discussed with an emphasis on the consequences of suspects' mindset during the preinterrogation decision-making process.

Confession evidence is highly incriminating in court. We examined the interaction between chronotype and time of day on the confession decisions of 60 participants using an experimental paradigm. Pre-identified morning- and evening-type people were randomly assigned to participate in morning or evening sessions. Results supported an interactional asynchrony hypothesis that individuals are more likely to confess during “off-peak” periods (i.e., evening-types in the morning and morning-types in the evening). This interaction was obtained for both high- and low-seriousness transgressions. These results suggest that chronotype asynchrony constitutes a significant risk factor for false confessions and the wrongful convictions that often follow.

Prejudice against atheists is pervasive in the United States. Atheists lag behind virtually all other minority groups on measures of social acceptance. The sociofunctional approach suggests that distrust is at the core of anti-atheist prejudice, thus making it qualitatively different than prejudice against other disadvantaged groups. Accordingly, this research examined political bias against atheists, gays, and Blacks and the affective content accompanying such biases. Results indicated that atheists suffered the largest deficit in voting intentions from Christian participants, and this deficit was accompanied by distrust, disgust, and fear, thereby suggesting that the affective content of anti-atheist prejudice is both broader and more extreme than prejudice against other historically disadvantaged groups. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.

This research examined whether naturally-occurring self-fulfilling prophecies influenced adolescents’ responsiveness to a substance use prevention program. The authors addressed this issue with a unique methodological approach that was designed to enhance the internal validity of research on naturally-occurring self-fulfilling prophecies by experimentally controlling for prediction without influence. Participants were 321 families who were assigned to an adolescent substance use prevention program that either did or did not systematically involve parents. Results showed that parents’ perceptions about the value of involving parents in adolescent substance use prevention predicted adolescents’ alcohol use more strongly among families assigned to the prevention program that systematically involved parents than to the one that did not. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Drawing on the psychological principle that proximal consequences influence behavior more strongly than distal consequences, the authors tested the hypothesis that criminal suspects exhibit a short-sightedness during police interrogation that increases their risk for confession. Consistent with this hypothesis, Experiment 1 showed that participants (N = 81) altered how frequently they admitted to criminal and unethical behaviors during an interview to avoid a proximal consequence even though doing so increased their risk of incurring a distal consequence. Experiment 2 (N = 143) yielded the same pattern, but with a procedure that reversed the order of the proximal and distal consequences, thereby ruling out the possibility that it was the unique characteristics of the consequences rather than their proximity that influenced the admission rate. The authors discuss the supported psychological process as a potential explanation for several well-established findings reported in the literature on confessions.

This research examined whether self-fulfilling prophecies and perceptual confirmation effects accumulated across people. Trios of same-sex participants, each consisting of two interviewers and one target, were randomly assigned to one of three conditions that served to manipulate interviewers' expectations (i.e., non-hostile vs. hostile) and the similarity of their expectations (i.e., similar vs. dissimilar) for targets. Each trio participated in an interaction in which interviewers asked targets questions. Targets' hostility during the interaction and interviewers' impressions of targets' hostility following the interaction served as the primary dependent variables. Results indicated that perceptual confirmation effects accumulated across interviewers. Even though targets' behavior during the interaction did not differ across conditions, interviewers nonetheless judged targets as more hostile when both interviewers expected targets to be hostile than when only one did. The authors discuss these findings in terms of the potential implications for those who have multiple inaccurate and unfavorable expectations held about them. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A core theme of social psychology is that perceivers can shape targets’ future behaviors through self-fulfilling prophecies. Self-fulfilling prophecies occur when perceivers’ false beliefs about targets initiate a sequence of events that ultimately cause targets to exhibit expectancy-consistent behaviors, thereby causing perceivers’ initially false beliefs to become true. This article reviews theory and research relevant to self-fulfilling prophecies with particular foci on the underlying mechanisms that produce self-fulfilling prophecies, the power of self-fulfilling prophecies to alter behavior, and the extent to which self-fulfilling prophecies contribute to social problems. Psychology has long emphasized the power of beliefs to shape reality (e.g., Klein & Snyder, 2003; Merton, 1948; Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968; Snyder, 1984, 1992; Snyder & Stukas, 1999). The emphasis on the construction of social reality has roots in New Look in Perception research of the 1940s and 1950s which promoted the idea that perception is heavily influenced by people’s goals, needs, fears, and motives. The self-fulfilling prophecy is central to this theoretical perspective because it involves the behavioral confirmation of false beliefs (Merton, 1948). In this article, we discuss the self-fulfilling prophecy, beginning first with its definition followed by a brief discussion of its history within the social sciences. We then discuss three issues that have driven much of the research in the area. These issues pertain to underlying mechanisms of self-fulfilling prophecies, the power of self-fulfilling prophecies to alter behavior, and the extent to which self-fulfilling prophecies contribute to social problems.

This research examined whether self-verification acts as a general mediational process of self-fulfilling prophecies. The authors tested this hypothesis by examining whether self-verification processes mediated self-fulfilling prophecy effects within a different context and with a different belief and a different outcome than has been used in prior research. Results of longitudinal data obtained from mothers and their adolescents ( N = 332) indicated that mothers’ beliefs about their adolescents’ educational outcomes had a significant indirect effect on adolescents’ academic attainment through adolescents’ educational aspirations. This effect, observed over a 6-year span, provided evidence that mothers’ self-fulfilling effects occurred, in part, because mothers’ false beliefs influenced their adolescents’ own educational aspirations, which adolescents then self-verified through their educational attainment. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed.

Acculturation and ethnic identity may be associated with Latino/as’ educational outcomes and be relevant to their lower levels of academic achievement. This article explores how these relationships might be mediated by considering several empirically supported and theory-based social psychological processes—the selffulfilling prophecy, stigma consciousness, and stereotype threat. These processes suggest specific mediational mechanisms that remain largely unexamined, thereby offering novel directions for research and the potential to enrich understanding of the relationship between Latino/a ethnicity and academic performance. Consideration of these mediational mechanisms suggests that some groups within the Latino/a population face even greater challenges with regard to educational achievement. Accordingly, the particular difficulties encountered by Latinas and the children of families of migrant workers and new and undocumented immigrants are discussed. In addition, the potential relevance of education policies to the operation of the reviewed processes is explored. Latino/as in the United States face a number of challenges regarding education and lag behind their Euro-American counterparts in terms of academic achievement. Educational disparities for Latino/as begin in preschool and are evident at all subsequent markers of achievement, including decreased rates of attaining undergraduate and graduate degrees (Fry, 2003; Llagas & Snyder, 2003; Verdugo, 2006). The cited reports review the multiple sociological and economic barriers faced by Latino/as and highlight limited English proficiency (LEP) as a major hurdle to academic success. Because English is the predominant language

This research examined whether self-fulfilling prophecy effects are mediated by self-verification, informational conformity, and modeling processes. The authors examined these mediational processes across multiple time frames with longitudinal data obtained from two samples of mother-child dyads (N-sub-1 = 486; N-sub-2 = 287), with children's alcohol use as the outcome variable. The results provided consistent support for the mediational process of self-verification. In both samples and across several years of adolescence, there was a significant indirect effect of mothers' beliefs on children's alcohol use through children's self-assessed likelihood of drinking alcohol in the future. Comparatively less support was found for informational conformity and modeling processes as mediators of mothers' self-fulfilling effects. The potential for self-fulfilling prophecies to produce long-lasting changes in targets' behavior via self-verification processes are discussed.

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 WileySons, Ltd.

Innocent suspects may not adequately protect themselves during interrogation because they fail to fully appreciate the danger of the situation. This experiment tested whether innocent suspects experience less stress during interrogation than guilty suspects, and whether refusing to confess expends physiologic resources. After experimentally manipulating innocence and guilt, 132 participants were accused and interrogated for misconduct, and then pressured to confess. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP, DBP), heart rate (HR), respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), and preejection period (PEP) responses quantified stress reactions. As hypothesized, the innocent evidenced smaller stress responses to interrogation for SBP, DBP, HR, and RSA than did the guilty. Furthermore, innocents who refused to confess exhibited greater sympathetic nervous system activation, as evidenced by shorter PEPs, than did innocent or guilty confessors. These findings suggest that innocent suspects underestimate the threat of interrogation and that resisting pressures to confess can diminish suspects' physiologic resources and lead to false confessions.

This research examined whether the protections afforded by Miranda are compromised by two situational factors that may be present during the Miranda administration process. The factors examined were the police tactic of trivializing the importance of a waiver and the stress that accompanies an accusation of serious misconduct. All participants (N = 89) were accused of misconduct on an experimental task and were led to believe that they would have to discuss the incident with the professor in charge of the experiment. In addition, all participants were asked to sign a waiver of their right to have a student advocate present during that meeting, after which their comprehension of the waiver was assessed. To manipulate the police tactic of trivializing a waiver, participants were told that the waiver had important or trivial implications for their future outcomes. To manipulate stress, participants were told that their misconduct was either a serious or minor violation of the experiment. Results indicated that participants were more likely to sign the waiver and had worse comprehension of its content when it was described as trivial versus important. Participants' comprehension of the waiver was also worse when their misconduct was described as a serious versus a minor violation of the experiment. These findings have implications for policy regarding the standardization of Miranda administration protocols as well as for future research aimed at understanding the influence of situational factors on Miranda waivers and comprehension.

Suspects have a preexisting vulnerability to make short-sighted confession decisions, giving disproportionate weight to proximal, rather than distal, consequences. The findings of the current research provided evidence that this preexisting vulnerability is exacerbated by factors that are associated with the immediate interrogation situation. In Experiment 1 (N = 118), a lengthy interview exacerbated participants' tendency to temporally discount a distal consequence when deciding whether or not to admit to criminal and unethical behaviors. This effect was especially pronounced among less serious behaviors. In Experiment 2 (N = 177), participants' tendency to temporally discount a distal consequence when making admission decisions was exacerbated by the expectation of a lengthy interview; an effect that became stronger the longer the interview continued. These findings suggest that conditions of the immediate interrogation situation may capitalize on an already-present vulnerability among suspects to make short-sighted confession decisions, thereby increasing the chances that even innocent suspects might confess.

Miranda v. Arizona (384 U.S. 436, 1966) required that suspects be explicitly warned of the right to avoid self-incrimination and the right to legal representation. This research was designed to examine whether stress, induced via an accusation of wrong-doing, undermined or enhanced suspects' ability to comprehend their Miranda rights. Participants were randomly assigned to either be accused (n = 15) or not accused (n = 15) of having cheated on an experimental task in a two-cell between-subjects experimental design. Results supported the hypothesis that stress undermines suspects' ability to comprehend their Miranda rights. Participants who were accused of cheating exhibited significantly lower levels of Miranda comprehension than participants who were not accused of cheating. The theoretical processes responsible for these effects and the implications of the findings for police interrogation are discussed.