The Effect of Capital Punishment on Jurors' Willingness to Convict

Decision-making theory suggests that jurors will tend to choose the verdict that maximizes the expected gains minus the expected losses of each decision. Capital punishment (as compared to a maximum sentence of life imprisonment) would seem to increase the perceived negative consequences of a guilty verdict without affecting the consequences of a non-guilty verdict. This should make guilty decisions less likely. To test this prediction, questionnaires were sent to all jurors who had served on 32 first degree murder trials in which capital punishment was not in effect and who reached guilty verdicts. They were asked whether their verdicts in the murder trial would have been affected if capital punishment had been a possible sentence. Thirty percent of the respondents replied that they would have been less likely to vote guilty, whereas only 3% said they would have been more likely to vote guilty. Of the 32 separate jury panels, 30 had at least one person who indicated that he or she would have been less likely to vote guilty; and in 7 trials, 50% or more of those who responded gave this answer. The results appear to indicate that the possibility of a death sentence reduces the likelihood of a guilty verdict.     

Group Performance Depends on the Majority Rule

Some group decisions require a two-thirds or three-quarters majority of the people voting; others require only a simple majority. Does the accuracy of a group's decision making depend on which majority rule is used? A signal detection theory analysis was used to answer this question. Each member of a group was presented with a noisy display of either a signal or a nonsignal, and then each member cast a yes or no vote for the existence of a signal. The group decision was determined by a majority rule of the members' votes. Normative groups and groups of 5 or 7 people exhibited the same behavior: Performance was best when the group used a simple-majority rule and decreased when the group used more stringent rules. The worst performance was produced by a unanimous rule. Some group members adopted more liberal response criteria when the majority rule was made more stringent.     

Regulatory Fit and Voting1

The problem of many democracies is low voter turnout. One reason is the voting procedure, which only allows voting for a party or candidate. Introduction of voting against could bring more voters to the polls. The concept of regulatory focus ( Higgins, 1998 ) suggests that people who focus on prevention would vote more eagerly if they are given the opportunity to blackball disliked candidates. This article describes 2 studies that verify this hypothesis. In the first study, over two thirds of participants declared that they would vote more willingly if they had a “for or against” choice at the election. The second study shows that the “pro or anti” formula is especially attractive to participants with a prevention regulatory focus.     

Reactions to Others' Selfish Actions in the Absence of Tangible Consequences

This research assessed the role of perceived selfishness in people's reactions to events without tangible consequences. In Experiment 1, participants were assigned to complete a boring task by another person who gave a selfish, legitimizing, or exculpatory explanation for the decision. However, half of the participants knew that the other's decision was irrelevant and that they would complete the task regardless of the person's decision. In a second experiment, participants were told that the decision was irrelevant either before or after learning that the other person assigned them to do the boring task. Both studies showed that participants who received a selfish explanation responded strongly to the other person whether or not the person's decision had tangible consequences for them.     

Age differences in attitude change: influences of cognitive resources and motivation on responses to argument quantity

This study examined the influences of cognitive resources and motivation on how young and older adults process different quantities of persuasive arguments. In the first experiment session, both young and older adults rated their attitudes toward marijuana legalization and capital punishment. After a week, they read either 3 or 9 similar-quality arguments supporting marijuana legalization and capital punishment. Half of participants were assigned to the high-involvement condition (i.e., told that they were going to discuss the arguments later with the experimenter) and the other half were assigned to the low-involvement condition (i.e., given no instructions). After reading the arguments, participants rated their attitudes toward those 2 social issues again. Highly involved young adults changed their attitudes regardless of the quantity of arguments, whereas lowly involved young adults' attitude change was influenced by the argument quantity. Older adults in both high-involvement and low-involvement conditions changed their attitudes according to the argument quantity. Working memory was found to mediate the age effects on attitude change. This finding demonstrated the importance of a cognitive mechanism in accounting for age differences in attitude change.     

财富越多，责任越大：资金数量和来源对公共物品困境中第三方惩罚的影响

本研究探讨了公共物品困境中,初始资金的数量和来源如何影响第三方对成员贡献值的评价及惩罚。行为结果发现了“贵族责任效应”,即在同等贡献值条件下,相比于获得较少初始资金的成员,第三方会更重地惩罚获得较多初始资金的成员。当初始资金是随机分配而非通过个人努力获得时,该效应更强。在神经层面上,发现初始资金的数量和来源调节了第三方评估贡献值时所诱发的FRN和P3成分。其中FRN波幅与惩罚力度显著相关。本研究揭示了初始资金数量和来源如何调节第三方对成员贡献的评估及相关惩罚决策。     

La communication engageante au service de la réduction de l'abstentionnisme électoral : une application en milieu universitaire

In the week preceding a vote on the bilateral agreements between Switzerland and the European Union that took place in May 2000, a sample of students (attending a training school for social workers in Lausanne) was divided into three groups. All three groups were exposed to a speech condemning electoral abstention. In addition to this, subjects in two of the three groups were asked to carry out a preparatory activity: filling in a questionnaire on their opinions and voting practices or drawing up an argument against abstention (in these two groups, subjects also had to publicly declare — by a show of hands — whether they intended to vote or not). The existence of an elector card system enabled us to check a posteriori the actual voting behaviour of the subjects. A significantly higher number of students in the two groups that carried out preparatory activities actually participated in the vote compared with the group that had simply been subjected to an anti-abstention speech. These results are discussed in terms of committing communication within the framework of commitment theory.     

Implicit and explicit prejudice in the 2008 American presidential election

The 2008 US presidential election was an unprecedented opportunity to study the role of racial prejudice in political decision making. Although explicitly expressed prejudice has declined dramatically during the last four decades, more subtle implicit forms of prejudice (which come to mind automatically and may influence behavior unintentionally) may still exist. In three surveys of representative samples of American adults, explicit and implicit prejudice were measured during the months preceding the election. Both explicit and implicit prejudice were significant predictors of later vote choice. Citizens higher in explicit prejudice were less likely to vote for Barack Obama and more likely to vote for John McCain. After controlling for explicit prejudice, citizens higher in implicit prejudice were less likely to vote for Obama, but were not more likely to vote for McCain. Instead, they were more likely to either abstain or to vote for a third-party candidate rather than Obama. The results suggest that racial prejudice may continue to influence the voting process even among people who would not endorse these attitudes.     

Votes Without Power:Procedural Justice as Mutual Control in Majority-Minority Relations1

In an application of procedural justice theory (Lind & Tyler, 1988; Tyler, 1989) to the domain of intergroup relations, we investigated justice preferences among members of numerical majority and minority groups as a function of two parameters: the number of representatives allotted to each group, and the decision rule used to determine the outcome (ranging from simple majority vote to unanimity). In the first study, minority group members perceived the combination of proportional representation and majority vote to be significantly less fair than all other combinations, and their choices of procedure stressed “mutual control” (when the decision rule exceeds the number of representatives possessed by either group). In a second study, majority group members perceived the combination of equal representation and majority vote to be significantly less fair than other procedures, but their choices of procedure did involve a considerable degree of mutual control. These findings suggest that there may be some basis for agreement between majority and minority group members' justice preferences and that both groups may perceive situations of mutual control to be acceptable. A third study involving both majority and minority group members ruled out an interpretation of the previous results in terms of motivation to maintain vs. change the status quo.     

支付与报复：成本形式对第三方惩罚的影响

第三方惩罚不仅对惩罚成本的数量敏感,也对成本形式敏感。在保持成本数量相等的情况下,不同形式的惩罚成本会对第三方惩罚的频率产生不同影响。相较支付形式,当惩罚成本采取报复形式时,被试的第三方惩罚频率显著下降。进一步的实验表明,惩罚频率的变化并非因为不同的成本形式所隐含的风险水平有所差异,而是因为被试对不同的成本形式赋予了不同的主观价值。进一步探索更多形式的惩罚成本是未来研究的重要方向。     

道德与关系惩罚对初中生公共物品困境中合作行为的影响

本研究模拟公共物品两难困境范式,以初中生为被试,通过两个实验分别考察道德惩罚和关系惩罚对不同性别和社会价值取向个体合作行为的影响。结果发现:(1)两种惩罚条件下初中生的合作水平均显著高于无惩罚条件,但当惩罚撤除后只有关系惩罚条件下的效应还存在;(2)初中女生在两种惩罚条件下的合作水平均显著高于无惩罚条件,而男生只在关系惩罚条件下出现该情况;(3)亲社会取向与亲自我取向初中生在两种惩罚阶段均表现出更高的合作水平,但在惩罚撤除后,只有亲社会取向者保持了高合作水平。这些结果表明,关系惩罚的作用较为持久,且对男生的影响更为突出,不过两种惩罚在亲社会取向者身上均显现出延后效应。     

Two Egocentric Sources of the Decision to Vote: The Voter's Illusion and the Belief in Personal Relevance

The decision to vote in a national election requires a choice between serving a social good and satisfying one's self-interest. Viewed as a cooperative response in a social dilemma, casting a vote seems irrational because it cannot have a discernible effect on the electoral outcome. The findings of two studies with undergraduate samples suggest that some people vote not because they set aside self-interest, but because they expect their own behaviors to matter. Two psychological processes contribute to this belief: the voter's illusion (the projection of one's own choice between voting and abstention to supporters of the same party or candidate), and the belief in personal relevance (the belief that one's own vote matters regardless of its predictive value for the behavior of others). The rationality of these two egocentric mechanisms depends on the normative framework invoked. Their relevance for actual voting behavior is indicated by their ability to account for four types of variation in turnout rates.     

Electoral Quid Pro Quo: A Defence of Barter Markets in Votes

In this article I aim to provide the first normative discussion of barter voting markets, namely markets which allow the trading of votes on issues/elections for votes on other issues/elections. The article is framed within the wider literature on the legal permissibility of vote buying, with a particular focus on the recent debate between Christopher Freiman and James Stacey Taylor. I argue that while Taylor's objections successfully defeat Freiman's case in favour of standard voting markets, they are unable to also defeat the type of voting markets outlined here. Furthermore, I argue that there are at least two plausible prima facie reasons in favour of barter voting markets, grounded in their capacity to contribute to the alleviation of injustice for systematically disadvantaged socio‐economic groups and to their capacity to reduce one form of bad voting, i.e. voting from ignorance.     

Church Voting Recommendations,Voter Preferences,and Political Decisions

In Switzerland, two key church institutions—the Conference of Swiss Bishops and the Federation of Protestant Churches—make public recommendations on how to vote for certain referenda. We leverage this situation to directly measure religious organizations’ power to reflect and shape human decision making. That is, using a direct measure of voters’ commitment to their religious institution, we analyze whether they are more likely to vote in line with this organization's voting recommendation. We find that these recommendations do indeed wield influence, implying that even in a secularized world, religion plays a crucial role in voting decisions. Our results hold for both aggregate and individual-level voting decisions.     

Applying the SIDE model to brainwriting: The impact of intergroup comparison and anonymity on creative performance

According to the Social Identity model of Deindividuation Effects, intergroup comparison under anonymity accentuates social identity salience, potentially increasing motivation to work for one's group. The present experiment aimed to examine whether intergroup comparison and anonymity could boost creative performance in a brainwriting task. Sixty participants, randomly assigned to groups, wrote their ideas on sticky notes of the same (anonymity) or different color (individuation). To reinforce social identity salience, half the groups were told that their performance would be compared with other groups. As predicted, anonymity and intergroup comparison boosted both the number of nonredundant ideas produced by group members (fluency), and diversity of ideas pertaining to different categories (flexibility). By contrast, when social identity was not salient, anonymity led to an increase in the originality of ideas.     

幼儿在联合行动中共同表征能力的发展

为探究幼儿联合行动共同表征能力的发展,实验1通过比较186名3~5岁幼儿在相同任务和不同任务的表现,发现4岁和5岁幼儿在不同任务中的表现比相同任务差;实验2进一步验证幼儿在不同任务中较差的表现源于对自我和同伴的共同表征。结论：3岁幼儿无法在联合任务中同时表征自我和同伴,没有表现出明显的共同表征能力,4岁以上幼儿开始具备稳定的共同表征能力,能够在联合任务中同时表征自己和同伴,由此对自己的行为表现造成干扰。     

Self-Prophecy Effects and Voter Turnout: An Experimental Replication

Psychological research has found that being asked to predict one's future actions can bring about subsequent behavior consistent with the prediction but different from what would have occurred had no prediction been made. In a 1987 study, Greenwald, Carnot, Beach, and Young induced an increase in voting behavior by means of such a "self-prophecy" effect: Undergraduates who were asked to predict whether they would vote in an upcoming election were substantially more likely to go to the polls than those who had not been asked for a prediction. This paper reports on a replication of the Greenwald study conducted among a larger group of respondents more representative of the American electorate. No evidence was found that self-prophecy effects increase voter turnout.     

The difference between punishments and rewards in fostering moral concerns in social decision making

In social decision making, punishing non-cooperation and rewarding cooperation may not only affect cooperation because of instrumental reasons. They may also evoke moral concerns regarding cooperation as they signal that cooperation is socially approved of and non-cooperation socially disapproved of. I argue that punishments do this to a greater extent than rewards as punishments communicate an obligatory rule and rewards communicate a voluntary rule. Indeed, the first experiment shows that, in a social dilemma, the concept of punishment increased cooperation and the concept of a reward did not. The second experiment showed that participants showed more disapproval towards an offender when there was a punishment for non-compliance than when there was a reward for compliance. These findings suggest that punishing non-cooperation more strongly foster moral concerns regarding cooperation than rewarding cooperation. Possible implications for internalizations are discussed.     

THE RELATION BETWEEN BEHAVIORAL INTENTIONS AND BELIEFS: A PROBABILISTIC MODEL1

Based on mathematical probability theory, a model of the relationship between beliefs and behavioral intention was proposed and tested. In Experiment 1, subjects indicated their beliefs about the consequences of smoking cigarettes as well as their intention to smoke cigarettes. When combined according to the proposed model the average correlation between predicted and obtained behavioral intention was .78 (p<.01). In Experiment 2, implications of the model for changing behavioral intentions were examined. Subjects were presented a hypothetical election campaign between two candidates. Intentions to vote for a given candidate were measured prior to and after presentation of information about some of the candidates' political views. Using the proposed model of intention, the predicted and observed changes in voting intentions were correlated .72 (p<.01). Implications of the model for theories of social behavior and persuasion were discussed.