Lay personality knowledge and dispositionist thinking: A knowledge-activation framework

We explicate a knowledge-activation framework depicting the link between lay personality knowledge and dispositional judgments, building on work by [Dweck et al., 1995a] and [Dweck et al., 1995b]. According to this framework, most people possess knowledge consistent with an entity theory (personality is fixed) and incremental theory (personality is malleable), which operates according to knowledge-activation principles. Consistent with this claim, we find that people render more confident dispositional judgments when their entity knowledge is made relatively more accessible through priming manipulations that activate aspects of their existing knowledge. Findings also illustrate the usefulness of incorporating both specific and general knowledge in our analysis. The present framework enhances and complements the individual-differences approach to the study of person theories prevalent in the literature.     

Lay understanding of genetic disease: A British study of families attending a genetic counseling service

Although lay people know that various diseases can be inherited, the idea that unhealthy life styles are the crucial cause of ill health has been promoted by health education policy in the United Kingdom. However, a new paradigm seems to be developing. The medical profession is increasingly using genetics to explain ill health, and people are being referred to geneticists for information and counseling. Lay conceptions of genetic disease emerged during this qualitative study of the process of genetic counseling. The results reported in this paper suggest that many lay people lack knowledge of genetics and inheritance, and that there is considerable stigma attached to genetic disease. Misconceptions and fears may not always be recognized or resolved during the process of genetic counseling. The implications of such misunderstandings and beliefs are considered in this paper.     

Ethnicity and behaviour in organizations: A review of British research

Research into the role of ethnicity in behaviour in US organizations has been the subject of several reviews. However no such review of British research has thus far been undertaken. Fifty‐four years' worth of selected occupational psychology, organizational behaviour and human resource management journals were therefore reviewed to identify the number and focus of articles relating to ethnicity in British organizations. On the basis of the review findings four key questions were addressed: (i) How much work has been done? (ii) Why has relatively little work been done? (iii) What have we learned about ethnicity and the British workplace? and, (iv) What do we still need to learn? The research shows that only a limited amount of research has been conducted and most of this focuses on a small number of topics. Six recommendations for future research are made: (i) studying ethnicity in a more careful and detailed way; (ii) developing theory; (iii) examining what happens to minority ethnic employees after selection; (iv) more research on minority ethnic professionals; (v) more qualitative research; and, (vi) a greater focus on specific ethnic groups. Recommendations to draw lessons from the way other disciplines have conceptualized and researched ethnicity are also discussed.     

On the "general acceptance" of eyewitness testimony research. A new survey of the experts

In light of recent advances, this study updated a prior survey of eyewitness experts (S. M. Kassin, P. C. Ellsworth, & V. L. Smith, 1989). Sixty-four psychologists were asked about their courtroom experiences and opinions on 30 eyewitness phenomena. By an agreement rate of at least 80%, there was a strong consensus that the following phenomena are sufficiently reliable to present in court: the wording of questions, lineup instructions, confidence malleability, mug-shot-induced bias, postevent information, child witness suggestibility, attitudes and expectations, hypnotic suggestibility, alcoholic intoxication, the crossrace bias, weapon focus, the accuracy-confidence correlation, the forgetting curve, exposure time, presentation format, and unconscious transference. Results also indicate that these experts set high standards before agreeing to testify. Despite limitations, these results should help to shape expert testimony so that it more accurately represents opinions in the scientific community.     

Effects of cannabis on eyewitness memory: A field study

Eyewitnesses to crimes are regularly under the influence of drugs, such as cannabis. Yet there is very little research on how the use of cannabis affects eyewitness memory. In the present study, we assessed the effects of cannabis on eyewitness recall and lineup identification performance in a field setting. One hundred twenty visitors of coffee shops in Amsterdam viewed a videotaped criminal event, were interviewed about the event, and viewed a target‐present or target‐absent lineup. Witnesses under the influence of cannabis remembered significantly fewer correct details about the witnessed event than did sober witnesses, with no difference in incorrect recall. Cannabis use was not significantly associated with lineup identification performance, but intoxicated witnesses were significantly better at judging whether their lineup identification was accurate. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

The British Journal of Psychology centenary: A preliminary content survey and its problems

The preliminary findings are reported of a review of the contents of the British Journal of Psychology 1904–2003 undertaken to mark the journal's centenary. This identifies (a) the top 11 categories of paper published and their patterns of distribution, (b) an apparent change in the nature of papers published after 1983, (c) the overall pattern of category‐introduction, showing a dramatic change in 1965 and (d) a provisional typology of the principal patterns of distribution over time. Major conceptual and practical problems arising in the categorization of papers, and their implications, are discussed. Some reflections are offered on the possible value of research of this kind and on the nature of the journal itself.     

Effects of prior knowledge and response bias upon recognition memory for a story: Implications for children's eyewitness testimony

Abstract: The present study was designed to evaluate the integration hypothesis and the response bias hypothesis for explaining the fragility of children's eyewitness memory, by varying the plausibility of postevent information and the strength of response bias in recognition tests. Preschool children were told a story in which a boy named Ken saw a housebreaker stealing various objects and the postevent information was also incorporated into the story. The first recognition test was administered immediately following the presentation of an interpolated story, and the second recognition test was administered 10 weeks later. The results indicated that high-plausibility objects tended to be recognized as the stolen objects in the second recognition test, and that recognition accuracy was higher for a new-distractor condition than for a misleading-distractor condition. These findings were interpreted as suggesting that the memory representation of the story might be changed through the integration processes and/or rendered inaccessible in terms of the response bias.     

A temporal discriminability account of children's eyewitness suggestibility

Children's suggestibility is typically measured using a three‐stage ‘event–misinformation–test’ procedure. We examined whether suggestibility is influenced by the time delays imposed between these stages, and in particular whether the temporal discriminability of sources (event and misinformation) predicts performance. In a novel approach, the degree of source discriminability was calculated as the relative magnitude of two intervals (the ratio of event–misinformation and misinformation–test intervals), based on an adaptation of existing ‘ratio‐rule’ accounts of memory. Five‐year‐olds (n =150) watched an event, and were exposed to misinformation, before memory for source was tested. The absolute event–test delay (12 versus 24 days) and the ‘ratio’ of event–misinformation/misinformation–test intervals (11:1, 3:1, 1:1, 1:3 and 1:11) were manipulated across participants. The temporal discriminability of sources, measured by the ratio, was indeed a strong predictor of suggestibility. Most importantly, if the ratio was constant (e.g. 18/6 versus 9/3 days), performance was remarkably similar despite variations in absolute delay (e.g. 24 versus 12 days). This intriguing finding not only extends the ratio‐rule of distinctiveness to misinformation paradigms, but also serves to illustrate a new empirical means of differentiating between explanations of suggestibility based on interference between sources and disintegration of source information over time.     

Remembering a criminal conversation: beyond eyewitness testimony

Unlike the important body of work on eyewitness memory, little research has been done on the accuracy and completeness of "earwitness" memory for conversations. The present research examined the effects of mode of presentation (audiovisual/ auditory-only) on witnesses' free recall for utterances in a criminal conversation at different retention intervals (immediate/delayed) within a single experiment. Different forms of correct recall (verbatim/gist) of the verbal information as well as different types of errors (distortions/fabrications) were also examined. It was predicted that participants in the audiovisual modality would provide more correct information, and fewer errors than participants in the auditory-only modality. Participants' recall was predicted to be impaired over time, dropping to a greater extent after a delay in the auditory-only modality. Results confirmed these hypotheses. Interpretations of the overall findings are offered within the context of dual-coding theory, and within the theoretical frameworks of source monitoring and fuzzy-trace theory.     

Misinformation and warnings in eyewitness testimony: A new testing procedure to differentiate explanations

Abstract

Although psychologists agree that the presentation of misleading post-event information often results in errant recollections, there is disagreement about the explanation as to why this occurs. Some (cf. Loftus, Donders, Hoffman, & Schooler, 1989) believe this misinformation alters the memory trace created by the original information, whereas others (cf. McCloskey & Zaragoza, 1985) have argued that the data do not necessitate this explanation. An experiment, designed to differentiate the various explanations, was conducted. Its critical elements were: (1) a condition with a specific warning presented immediately after the misleading information; and (2) a ranking procedure used at testing. The results suggest multiple traces may exist for a limited period, but not indefinitely.     

Stress and coping in the practice of family therapy: a British survey

A sample of 171 members of the Association for Family Therapy (UK) was surveyed and data obtained on their general level of experienced stress, the sources and levels of experienced stresses they encountered in their practica, and the professional and private coping strategies they used to mitigate the effects of these stressors. The results indicate that stress can be experienced in all practice contexts, with important factors in its overall configuration being personal/professional worth and agency expectation. Family therapists appear to prefer coping strategies of a more social nature and there is an ambivalent attitude towards'therapy for therapists'.     

Exposure duration: Effects on eyewitness accuracy and confidence

The current study examined the relationship between the length of exposure to a face in an eyewitness setting and identification accuracy and confidence. A sample of 164 young (ages 17–25) and older (ages 59–81) adults viewed a simulated crime in which they saw the culprit's face for a short (12 s) or long (45 s) duration. They were then tested with a target absent (a line‐up not containing the culprit) or target present line‐up. Identification accuracy rates for both young and older participants were significantly higher under the long exposure condition. In the short exposure condition, witnesses who had made a correct identification of the target were more confident than incorrect witnesses. In the long exposure condition the confidence ratings of accurate and inaccurate witnesses did not differ. Discussion focuses on the extent to which extended exposure may inflate confidence judgments and variables that may moderate the relationship between exposure duration and face recognition accuracy.     

Mechanisms of eyewitness suggestibility: tests of the explanatory role hypothesis

In a recent paper, Chrobak and Zaragoza (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(3), 827–844, 2013) proposed the explanatory role hypothesis, which posits that the likelihood of developing false memories for post-event suggestions is a function of the explanatory function the suggestion serves. In support of this hypothesis, they provided evidence that participant-witnesses were especially likely to develop false memories for their forced fabrications when their fabrications helped to explain outcomes they had witnessed. In three experiments, we test the generality of the explanatory role hypothesis as a mechanism of eyewitness suggestibility by assessing whether this hypothesis can predict suggestibility errors in (a) situations where the post-event suggestions are provided by the experimenter (as opposed to fabricated by the participant), and (b) across a variety of memory measures and measures of recollective experience. In support of the explanatory role hypothesis, participants were more likely to subsequently freely report (E1) and recollect the suggestions as part of the witnessed event (E2, source test) when the post-event suggestion helped to provide a causal explanation for a witnessed outcome than when it did not serve this explanatory role. Participants were also less likely to recollect the suggestions as part of the witnessed event (on measures of subjective experience) when their explanatory strength had been reduced by the presence of an alternative explanation that could explain the same outcome (E3, source test + warning). Collectively, the results provide strong evidence that the search for explanatory coherence influences people’s tendency to misremember witnessing events that were only suggested to them.