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While research has shown magnitude of harm drives punishment decisions for crimes resulting in a prison sentence, many states impose probation rather than incarceration. A two-session experiment investigated how punishment type influences sentence length decisions. In session 1,347 participants answered online questions about their support for punishment justifications (i.e., retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation). In session 2, the online participants read a randomly assigned scenario about a clerk who stole either a smaller or larger amount of money from his employer (magnitude of harm), which the employer was either likely or unlikely to detect (detection), and the clerk received either a term of prison or probation (type of punishment). Results revealed that magnitude of harm influenced punishment severity and sentence length judgments despite participants' self-reported support for retribution as a justification showing no influence. Punishment type also affected sentence length decisions. Furthermore, punishment severity judgments mediated the effect of the magnitude of harm on sentence length after controlling for punishment justifications but only in the probation condition, showing demand for harsher punishment was greater for probation. Thus, we concluded that the retribution motive is prevalent if offenders with a more severe crime receive probation rather than a prison sentence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

With over 600,000 Americans released from jails and prisons each year, it is increasingly important to understand the challenges that ex-offenders face when they attempt to reintegrate into society. Prior recidivism data indicate that over 80% of this population were rearrested within a decade of release, suggesting that the current social and economic environment is not conducive to successful reentry. The current research employs a simulation paradigm to explore how affective forecasting might predict hiring decisions for applicants with a criminal history. Using an online sample of adults (N = 322), an experimental hiring paradigm examined mock employment decisions for Black versus White applicants with or without a criminal history by measuring the degree to which applicant characteristics determined mock employer emotional forecasts and how those forecasts subsequently mediated simulated hiring outcomes. As expected, mock employers forecasted more intense negative emotion and less intense positive emotion when considering applicants who had a criminal history, and those forecasts predicted less favorable mock hiring outcomes for ex-offender applicants. Additionally, consistent with affective forecasting research, results showed that participants over-estimated the intensity of their negative emotion by forecasting more intense negative feelings than they experienced upon learning about the simulated hiring outcome. These findings suggest that evaluators generate emotional expectations about hiring applicants with a criminal history, which in turn account for their employment recommendations. Further, when evaluators utilize negative emotional predictions in a hiring decision they are likely relying on inaccurate information.

A victim-centered approach to fighting sex trafficking can result in apprehension and prosecution of traffickers and offer needed services to survivors. However, law enforcement officers frequently arrest sex-trafficking survivors for prostitution in accordance with state law. This study examined the psychology of public reactions and judgments of sex-trafficking survivors demonstrating the importance of situational factors, cognitive stereotypes, and moral emotions. Using Stereotype Content Modeling to measure the stereotypes that 762 community members held about prostitutes, we found shared stereotypes that were low in competence (i.e., capable and skilled) and warmth (i.e., good-natured and friendly). These participants later read modified case facts from United States v. Bell (United States v. Bell, 761 F.3d (8th Cir. 2014)) that varied survivor history of prostitution, vulnerability, and prostitution as a subsequent livelihood. Participants who stereotyped prostitutes as low in warmth and competence were the ones most certain police should arrest the survivor. Moral emotion analyses further showed that a survivor with no prior prostitution history and who came from a nonvulnerable background invoked disgust and contempt, which predicted a higher certainty of the arrest. Moral emotions fully mediated the relationship between the interacting case facts and arrest certainty for the trafficking survivor. Future directions and policy implications are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

In Title VII sexual harassment jurisprudence, U.S. courts use a 2-prong subjective-objective test to determine the viability of a sexual harassment claim: The complainant must show that the employer's conduct was unwelcome and sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of employment and create an abusive working environment because of the complainant's sex from both the complainant's perspective (subjective prong) and a reasonable person's perspective (objective prong). This online study used a diverse national sample (361 MTurk Community Members) to investigate whether people apply the objective prong in a uniform manner, as the law assumes, or show predictable differences. Participants read a vignette about a female interviewee's allegations of sexual harassment following from severe, mild, or no sexual objectification by a male interviewer during a job interview. The interviewee claimed that she was either harassed or not by the interviewer during the interaction, as well as claiming to enjoy or reject sexualization. Participants made judgments about whether the interviewer's behavior was sexually harassing from the interviewee's and a reasonable person's perspective. Overall, participants' sex and enjoyment of sexualization moderated their judgments of sexual harassment when considering the situation from both points of view, demonstrating that there is no convergence on a unified standard for evaluating whether specific behavior is sexually harassing. Drawing comparisons to obscenity law, we argue that the use of data to form social fact evidence may help decision makers in hostile work environment cases to apply a more uniform understanding of what is hostile and abusive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

This study examined the validity of the Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (LS/CMI), as probation officers in the state of Nebraska use the tool. Study 1 evaluated the predictive validity of the LS/CMI by examining 19,344 probationer records over a 5.5-year period (January 2007-July 2013), and found that the LS/CMI total risk score demonstrated moderate predictive validity. Consistent with past findings, logistic regression showed that the total risk score predicted recidivism (return to probation) differently for nonminorities than for minorities. Furthermore, minorities scored higher than nonminorities on seven of the eight criminogenic factors. Study 2, a true randomized experiment, explored probation officer bias as an explanation for these findings, and found that training increased officers’ ratings of scores in some LS/CMI domains and decreased ratings in others. Most importantly, there was no evidence that officers demonstrated racial bias in administering the LS/CMI survey when scoring Black versus White target clients.

Under Title VII, courts may give a mixed motive instruction allowing jurors to determine that defendants are liable for discrimination if an illegal factor (here: race, color, religion, sex, or national origin) contributed to an adverse decision. Recently, the Supreme Court held that to conclude that an employer discriminated against a worker because of age, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, unlike Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, requires "but for" causality, necessitating jurors to find that age was the determinative factor in an employer's adverse decision regarding that worker. Using a national online sample (N = 392) and 2 study phases, 1 to measure stereotypes, and a second to present experimental manipulations, this study tested whether older worker stereotypes as measured through the lens of the Stereotype Content Model, instruction type (but for vs. mixed motive causality), and plaintiff age influenced mock juror verdicts in an age discrimination case. Decision modeling in Phase 2 with 3 levels of case orientation (i.e., proplaintiff, prodefendant, and neutral) showed that participants relied on multiple factors when making a decision, as opposed to just 1, suggesting that mock jurors favor a mixed model approach to discrimination verdict decisions. In line with previous research, instruction effects showed that mock jurors found in favor of plaintiffs under mixed motive instructions but not under "but for" instructions especially for older plaintiffs (64- and 74-year-old as opposed to 44- and 54-year-old-plaintiffs). Most importantly, in accordance with the Stereotype Content Model theory, competence and warmth stereotypes moderated the instruction effects found for specific judgments. The results of this study show the importance of the type of legal causality required for age discrimination cases. (PsycINFO Database Record

Summary This paper examines the tension between equal protection and free speech in the hate speech context through a prospect theory lens. Two hundred and fifty-four participants recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk read a First Amendment free speech or Fourteenth Amendment equal protection argument framed to endorse the protections gained by each right, the losses avoided by each right, or the security provided by each right. Results showed gain-framing was more persuasive than loss-framing. Participant race and constitutional principle influenced punishment invoked for cross burning but not destruction of property or trespassing. Participants who received a positive framed equal protection argument believed the target would experience stronger negative emotions, particularly under low intimidation. Furthermore, participants receiving a positive frame speech argument believed the target would be less willing to support suppression. Unlike previous research, which suggests an equal protection principle default, this study demonstrated an impact of framed statements on decisions.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Sexual objectification is a significant problem that permeates all areas of women's lives including the workplace. This research examines the impact of sexual objectification on women in work settings by integrating objectification, sexual harassment, and affective forecasting theories. We used a laboratory analogue that included undergraduate women who actually experienced objectification during a work interview (i.e., experiencers) and third-party predictors (including female and male undergraduates as well as female and male community workers) who anticipated the effects of objectification (i.e., predictors). We measured actual and anticipated emotions, performance, and sexual harassment following objectification. We found that both mild and severe objectification caused weaker positive affect, stronger negative affect, worse work performance, and higher sexual harassment judgments, but these effects were primarily driven by predictors anticipating worse outcomes following objectification compared to what experiencers actually reported. We also found that experiencers’ responses to objectification were moderated by benevolent sexism with women lower in benevolent sexism responding more similarly to predictors relative to women higher in benevolent sexism. Both experiencers and predictors evaluated interviewers who engaged in objectification equally negatively. Finally, we explored differences between predictors who were female and male undergraduate students versus community workers and found that these parties anticipated different consequences, depending on worker status and gender. Implications for sexual objectification, sexual harassment, and affective forecasting theories as well as practical implications for policy and law are discussed.

In 2009, the Supreme Court decided, in Gross v. FBL, that the law governing age discrimination should be interpreted in a stricter manner than before. After Gross, age discrimination claims are tried under but for causality in which the plaintiff's age must be the direct cause of the adverse action, as opposed to mixed motive causality allowable under Title VII, in which age would only have to be a motivating factor. Previous research has shown that but for instructions lead to more pro-defendant verdicts, regardless of case strength, as compared to mixed motive instructions. This study reports on a simulated jury experiment that sought to uncover the influence of stereotypes concerning older workers on juror verdicts in an age discrimination case. Older worker stereotypes were assessed using the Stereotype Content Model's warmth and competence dimensions. In line with previous research, participants were more likely to find for the defendant under but for instructions, as compared to mixed motive. Further, mock jurors’ stereotypes predicted their verdicts, but only under the but for instructions, suggesting that jurors rely on stereotypes when they are limited in the case facts they can consider. Implications for policy changes and future research directions are discussed.

This research examined how people judge hostile work environments in which members of a work setting derogate other workers because they are older and presumed to be incompetent based on a psycholegal model incorporating negative affect and dehumanization (Wiener, Gervais, Brnjic, & Nuss, 2014). Specifically, we conducted a study in which a national sample of community participants read a scenario in which an interviewer did or did not derogate an older worker in a work interview. Respondents predicted affect (negative and positive), rated dehumanization (animalistic and mechanistic), and assessed hostile work environment (legal and impact). Consistent with hypotheses, derogation of the older worker caused more negative affect, more animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization, and more hostile work environment perceptions. Further, consistent with the mechanisms posited by our psycholegal model, path analysis revealed that negative affect and mechanistic dehumanization explained the relation between age derogation and hostile work environment judgments. The paper ends with a discussion of implications for organizations, law, and psychology, as well as directions for future research.

Social Analytic Jurisprudence instructs researchers to study the reciprocal relations between law and peoples’ lives by developing empirical descriptions of legal assumptions about human behavior. The present work introduced a new experimental paradigm to test some of those assumptions by studying the impact of sexual objectification in a simulated job interview on performance, sexual harassment judgments, and emotions for women who experienced (akin to complainants), observed (akin to coworkers or witnesses), or predicted (akin to investigators, EEOC officers, mediators, jurors, or judges,) the impact of sexual objectification. Consistent with hypotheses, sexual objectification resulted in worse performance predictions, more sexual harassment, and more negative emotion compared with the control condition, but these effects were moderated by perspective. Overall, predictors estimated worse performance, more sexual harassment, and more negative emotion in response to sexual objectification than observers and experiencers. Anticipated negative emotion and self-referencing explained the effects for predictors. Theoretical and practical implications for legal and psychological theory on sexual harassment, objectification, and affective forecasting are discussed.

This article focuses attention on research examining workplace discrimination against employees from marginalized groups. We particularly consider the experiences of seven different groups of marginalized individuals, some of which have legal protection and some of which do not but all of whom we feel have been overlooked by the field of industrial–organizational (I–O) psychology. We briefly describe the importance of studying each group and then delineate the brief amount of research that has been conducted. Finally, we make recommendations for I–O psychologists in terms of research and advocacy. Overall, we argue that I–O psychologists are missing an opportunity to be at the forefront of understanding and instigating changes that would result in maximizing the fairness and optimization of these often forgotten employees and their experiences in the workplace.

In 2 studies, we found support for current sexual harassment jurisprudence. Currently, the courts use a 2-prong test to determine the viability of a sexual harassment claim: that the adverse treatment is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter conditions of employment based on a protected class from the perspective of the individual complainant (subjective prong) and from the perspective of a reasonable person (objective prong). In Experiment 1, trained male undergraduate research assistants administered sequential objectifying gazes and comments to undergraduate female research participants. We found that the pervasive objectification delivered by multiple men (compared with 1 man) did not elicit more negative emotion or harm the experiencers' task performance, although it did lead them to make increased judgments of sexual harassment. In Experiment 2, observers (who viewed a recording of an experiencer's interactions with the male research assistants) and predictors (who read a protocol describing the facts of the interaction) anticipated the female targets would experience negative emotions, show impaired performance, as well as find more evidence in the interaction of sexual harassment. Observers' judgments mirrored those of the experiencers' while predictors' judgments demonstrated affective forecasting errors. Predictors were more likely to anticipate more negative emotion, worse performance, and greater likelihood of sexual harassment. Overall, these studies demonstrate the impact and importance of considering perceptions of sexual harassment from multiple perspectives and viewpoints. (PsycINFO Database Record

A great deal of research in legal decision making has overlooked the influence of affect on the decision-making process. The present study measured the fluctuation of emotions across five time points of a capital trial and tested the overall relationship between changes in emotion and sentencing decisions. The results showed that across all participants, anger initially increased and then decreased during the course of a capital punishment trial. Most importantly, the more individual mock jurors' anger increased during any stage of the trial, the more likely they were to assign a death sentence. Furthermore, when jurors' anger increased, they rated mitigating factors presented by the defense as weaker and the weaker mitigation mediated the relationship between change in anger and sentencing. The paper ends with a discussion of theoretical explanations and policy implications. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Language: en

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.

Despite the empirical success of Terror Management Theory (TMT) and the possibility that capital jurors may be unable to escape mortality salience effects, no studies have applied TMT to capital punishment trials. This research asked mock jurors to focus on their own death, the victim's death, or the defendant's death while reviewing a capital trial. Mock jurors who focused on the victim's or defendant's death (but not their own death) relied more on their attitudes toward the death penalty to make sentencing decisions than did other participants. These results raise questions about the usefulness of TMT in understanding capital jury decision making.

Previous research discusses the superiority of actuarial models over clinical models in a number of areas related to accuracy and consistency in decision making. The current project sought to develop an actuarial candidate selection model for affirmative action in higher education that would achieve the goal of diversity by assigning points for a number of diversity-related characteristics in addition to standard academic admission criteria. Two experiments showed that participants who used actuarial models selected applicants with more markers of academic success and greater diversity using factors favored by recent U.S. Supreme Court cases. The second experiment showed that an unweighted actuarial model also helped decision makers select more minority student candidates and that it produced higher ratings of procedural fairness. The article discusses how an actuarial model might pass Constitutional muster in light of recent Supreme Court cases.

People suffering from mental illness are increasingly referred to the domestic violence court. Yet the typical diversion programs available, including batterer's intervention programs, are inappropriate for those with serious mental illness. As a result, the Miami-Dade Domestic Violence Court has developed a new approach for dealing with this population that applies mental health court techniques in domestic violence court. This article will describe and discuss this pioneering model. It also will situate this model within the context of other problem-solving courts and discuss how the court uses principles and approaches of therapeutic jurisprudence. The paper presents some preliminary data that describe the social and legal characteristics of 20 defendants in the Domestic Violence Mental Health Court followed over a two year period between 2005 and 2007.

Recent years have seen a proliferation of problem solving courts designed to rehabilitate certain classes of offenders and thereby resolve the underlying problems that led to their court involvement in the first place. Some commentators have reacted positively to these courts, considering them an extension of the philosophy and logic of Therapeutic Jurisprudence, but others show concern that the discourse surrounding these specialty courts has not examined their process or outcomes critically enough. This paper examines that criticism from historical and social scientific perspectives. The analysis culminates in a model that describes how offenders are likely to respond to the process as they engage in problem solving court programs and the ways in which those courts might impact subsequent offender conduct. This Therapeutic Jurisprudence model of problem solving courts draws heavily on social cognitive psychology and more specifically on theories of procedural justice, motivation, and anticipated emotion to offer an explanation of how offenders respond to these programs. We offer this model as a lens through which social scientists can begin to address the concern that there is not enough critical analysis of the process and outcome of these courts. Applying this model to specialty courts constitutes an important step in critically examining the contribution of problem solving courts.

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.

Previous researchers have demonstrated differential prevalence of harassment of men and women in men’s traditional, women’s traditional, and neutral occupation types, but they have not looked at differences in harassment judgments among these occupations. Our hypotheses rely on the assumption that people who have observed frequent sexual harassment of others in their work environments react differently to new cases than do those who have witnessed fewer of these episodes in the past. Participants watched videos of two cases and made judgments about the presence or absence of sexual harassment. We categorized the participants based on their occupations—men’s traditional, women’s traditional, and neutral, and compared responses among groups. A gender by occupation type interaction emerged. Men in men’s traditional occupation types provided the highest ratings of harassment, followed by men in neutral occupations; men in women’s traditional occupation types provided the lowest ratings. Conversely, women in women’s traditional occupations provided the highest ratings of harassment, followed by women in neutral occupations; women in men’s traditional occupations provided the lowest ratings of sexual harassment.

Despite the availability of effective interventions, most individuals with social anxiety disorder do not seek treatment. Given their fear of negative evaluation, socially anxious individuals might be especially susceptible to stigma concerns, a recognized barrier for mental health treatment. However, very little is known about the stigma specific to social anxiety disorder. In a design similar to Feldman and Crandall (2007), university undergraduate students read vignettes about target individuals with a generic mental illness label, major depressive disorder, and social anxiety disorder. Subjects rated each of 3 people in the vignettes on social distance and 17 dimensions including dangerousness, heritability and prevalence of the disorder, and gender ratio. Results indicated that being male and not having experience with mental health treatment was associated with somewhat greater preferred social distance. Multiple regression analyses revealed that being embarrassed by the disorder and dangerousness predicted social distance across all 3 vignettes. The vignette for social anxiety disorder had the most complex model and included work impairment, more common among women, and more avoidable. These results have implications for understanding the specific aspects of the stigma associated with social anxiety disorder. Public service messages to reduce stigma should focus on more accurate information about dangerousness and mental illness, given this is an established aspect of mental illness stigma. More nuanced messages about social anxiety might be best incorporated into the treatment referral process and as part of treatment.

This article distinguishes generic prejudice, prejudgments about classes of cases and defendants, from other forms of juror bias that undermine the impartiality principle of the Constitution. It develops an experimental method to study 2 types of generic prejudice (biases based upon specific charges, and biases based upon crime categories) and tests the role of cognitive resource theory and simple attention models in explaining when generic prejudice is most likely to be a threat to jury decisions. Results of 2 experiments using undergraduate research participants as mock jurors demonstrate that generic prejudice is more likely to be found in sexual assault cases relative to homicide cases, but that general adjudicative bias favoring the prosecution or the defense across crime categories is more likely to be found in homicide cases. There was some support for cognitive resource theory as an explanation for evaluations in sexual assault cases, and simple attention models for evaluations in homicide cases.

In the last decade, researchers have shown burgeoning interest in issues at the intersection of emotion and law. Given the longstanding interest in emotion among social (and other) psychologists, most of this research has come from a psychological perspective, but it also includes work with a legal, sociological, philosophical, and neuroscience flavor. The issues are theoretical as well as practical, influencing both psychological theories of emotion and matters of legal practice and policy. The law adopts a double standard in its treatment of emotion. In some areas, the law explicitly addresses emotion as a legitimate consideration, but in other areas, the law denies emotion any role in legal decision making. For example, legal analysis requires decision makers to consider the emotional reactions of others when classifying certain offenses for purposes of criminal culpability (e.g., “hate crimes” and “crimes of passion”), awarding damages for emotional injuries (e.g., mental suffering and emotional distress), and allowing jurors’ moral judgments to influence certain consequential decisions such as punitive damages, capital sentencing, and jury nullification. At the same time, the courts make what may be untenable presumptions when they require factfinders to ignore their affective states and evaluate evidence, such as gory crime scene photographs, dispassionately. Thus, the field of law and emotion is ripe for scholarly exploration.

The influence of the availability of personally known and media known sexual harassment victims and harassers on perceptions of social sexual workplace conduct was examined. Male and female full-time workers evaluated two videotapes that depict sexual harassment in the workplace. Results indicated that perceived likelihood of harassment and discrimination increased as participants recalled more examples of harassment victims whom they personally knew. In some instances, recall of victims in the media had a similar influence. As predicted, the influence of availability was stronger for men than for women. Similar findings resulted from the analyses of the unwelcomeness, severity, and pervasiveness of the conduct; however, legal standard, gender, or case often moderated this relationship. The implications of these findings are discussed.

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.

Saint Louis UniversityThis article analyzes whether state-approved jury instructions adequately guide jurydiscretion in the penalty phase of first-degree murder trials. It examines EighthAmendment jurisprudence regarding guided jury discretion, emphasizing the use of“empirical factors” to examine the quality of state-approved instructions. Psycho-logical research and testimony on the topic of the comprehensibility of juryinstructions are reviewed. Data from a recently completed simulation with 80deliberating juries showed that current instructions do not adequately convey theconcepts and processes essential to guiding penalty phase judgments. An additionalsimulation with 20 deliberating juries demonstrated that deliberation alone does notcorrect for jurors’ errors in comprehension. The article concludes with recommen-dations for policy and future research.

A dual processing model of sexual harassment judgments predicted that the behavior of a complainant in a prior case would influence evaluations in an unrelated subsequent case. In the first of two experimental scenarios depicting social-sexual conduct at work, the female complainant's conduct was manipulated to be aggressive, submissive, ambiguous, or neutral. Half of the participants were asked to reflect upon the first scenario after reading it and before answering responsibility questions. The other half simply reviewed the scenario and answered the questions. When the complainant acted aggressively, her behavior in the first scenario caused men who reflected on the fact pattern to find less evidence of harassment. Most interestingly, an aggressive complainant observed in the first scenario caused participants (especially women) to rate lower the likelihood that a neutral complainant in a second independent case was the victim of gender discrimination. Across cases, men found less evidence of harassment than did women.

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.

The study of sexual harassment is an active and exciting arena for both legal scholars and psychologists and other social scientists. Legal rulings affect the course of psychological research, and research findings in turn inform legal scholars and the courts. This special theme issue brings togethe

This paper identifies rational orderliness and moral appropriateness as 2 norms that the United States Constitution requires for sentencing in capital murder trials. The courts convey these norms directly to jurors through jury instructions in the penalty phase of capital murder trials. To follow the instructions, jurors require accurate declarative knowledge (rules of law) and procedural knowledge (processes required to execute the rules) of state and federal sentencing law. Undergraduate mock jurors showed low accuracy for both types of knowledge after reviewing and listening to pattern jury instructions. Participants failed to offset aggravating factors with mitigating circumstances as the Missouri Approved Jury Instructions direct. The less knowledge that participants mastered about mitigation, the more certain they were of invoking the death penalty.

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).

Part I: Distributive justice: All else being equal: Overcoming the egalitarian norm.- Cutting your cake and having it too: Or, is equality a distributive justice principle?.- Part II: Objectification and discrimination.- A psycholegal model of hostile environments: The role of dehumanization.- Exploring the dark matter of objectification.- Part III: Justice and conflict involving people with mental illness.- Therapeutic jurisprudence and recovery from severe and disabling mental illness.- Mental illness, dangerousness, and police power interventions in pursuit of justice and well-being.- That's What Friends Are For: Mentors, LAP Lawyers, Therapeutic Jurisprudence, and Clients with Mental Illness.- Part IV: Political conflict, policy solutions, and citizens' wellbeing.- After violent conflict: Justice, wellbeing, and international criminal courts.- Complexity of accountability for mass atrocity.- Part V: Justice outside of court: Alternative dispute resolution.- Advancements in arbitral immunity and judicial review of arbitral awards create ethical loopholes in arbitration.- Retired to greener pastures: The public costs of private judging.- Part VI: Bringing wellbeing to children in conflict: Recess in primary school: The disjuncture between educational policy and scientific research.- Playground conflict: Everyday opportunities for children to manage conflict.

This research tests the possibility that the reasonable woman as compared to the reasonable person test of hostile work environment sexual harassment interacts with hostile and benevolent sexist beliefs and under some conditions triggers protectionist attitudes toward women who complain of sexual harassment. We administered to a sample of undergraduates the ambivalent sexism inventory along with the fact patterns in two harassment cases and asked them to make legally relevant decisions under either the reasonable woman or person standard. We found that those high in hostile sexism, and women, found more evidence of harassment. However, those high in benevolent sexism did not exhibit the hostile sexism effects. Although men were less sensitive to the reasonable woman standard than women, under some conditions the reasonable woman standard enabled both genders to find greater evidence of harassment. The results are discussed from the perspectives of law and psychology.