Jurors' Decisions in Trials of Battered Women Who Kill: The Role of Prior Beliefs and Expert Testimony1

The present research explored the influence of four factors on mock jurors' decisions in a homicide trial involving a battered woman who killed her abusive husband: (a) jurors' preexisting beliefs about wife abuse, (b) the presence of expert testimony on the battered woman syndrome, (c) jurors' beliefs in a just world, and (d) gender. Mock jurors listened to a trial involving a woman who had killed her abuser, which either contained expert testimony or did not, and then rendered various judgments about the case. Results indicated that those individuals who were more informed about the dynamics of abuse and those exposed to the expert testimony, compared to their respective counterparts, were more believing of the battered woman's account of what occurred. In general, weak believers in a just world were more lenient in their judgments, with verdicts of not guilty being associated with weaker beliefs in a just world than guilty verdicts. Weak believers in a just world also felt that the expert testimony applied more to the defendant than did strong believers. Finally, women who were weak believers in a just world were less likely to hold the defendant responsible for the events and to be more informed about the dynamics of abuse following the experiment.     

Signifying harassment: Communication,ambiguity and power

This essay reports on phenomenological research conducted with people who describe having been harassed, having been accused of harassment, and/or having mediated or adjudicated harassment disputes. The authors review recent legal conceptions of sexual harassment and articulate a methodology for analyzing individual narrative accounts. The analysis of six selected interviews (three alleged harassers and three declared harassees) depicts how, through discourse with others, persons in ambiguous cases of harassment come to perceive themselves as harassers or harasseesgradually, how intention is inferred from conductcontingently, and how perceptions and expressions are often reified as certainties in the effort to secure some sense of justiceinstitutionally.Many people have been involved with this project since its inception, and most wish to remain anonymous. We would like to thank all participants, colleagues, students, and critics for their contributions and expressions of interest. We would especially like to acknowledge Thomas Pace and Richard Lanigan for their teaching, friendship and support, and Frances Chaput Waksler for her helpful comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented to The Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences, Boston MA, USA, October 1992.     

Marriage and Family Counseling

This article provides an overview of marriage and family counseling, including the growth and interest of this specialty within the American Counseling Association (ACA). Areas discussed include the evolution of marriage and family counseling within ACA, standards for training, credentialing, and unique ethical considerations when counseling couples and families.     

The assessment of cortisol using salivary ultrafiltrate

Cortisol can be used to indicate stress level as well as to monitor certain disease states. Although cortisol can be sampled from blood and urine, saliva sampling has decided advantages. Unfortunately, whole saliva contains a number of substances that can metabolize or bind with cortisol, potentially confounding analysis and quantitation. We introduce a semipermeable pouch that accumulates a contaminant-free salivary ultrafiltrate, thereby overcoming a number of the problems encountered with whole saliva. In three studies, we demonstrate accuracy and utility of the device for cortisol determination: (1) in an artificial medium, 60%–77% of the cortisol was recovered in the ultrafiltrate; (2) in vivo, ultrafiltrate cortisol correlated highly with whole-saliva cortisol collected under ideal conditions; and (3) ultrafiltrate cortisol evinced positive relationships with depression and cigarette use, consistent with studies in the literature. We conclude that this device and saliva-filtering technologies in general are useful in applications requiring quantitation of cortisol.     

U.S.- and Mexico-born Hispanic teen mothers: a descriptive study of factors that relate to postpartum compliance

Compliance with postpartum visits after teenage births in the US was examined among 289 Hispanic teenagers, of whom 127 were born in Mexico or border towns, who delivered at Harris County Hospital District and scheduled postpartum appointments at the Teen Health Clinic. The mean age was 17.31 years for mothers and 21.95 years for fathers. 56.7% (164) were married. 49.8% lived with husbands, 25.8% with parents, 22.3% with friends/relatives, and 2.1% alone. 74.7% stated that they had no social supports. 88.9% had a term delivery, 8.3% a preterm delivery, and 2.8% a fetal loss. 67.5% were first births, 5.5% had a previous abortion, and 3.1% had a previous miscarriage. 23.2% had a previous child, and 0.7% had a previous preterm delivery. Some form of prenatal care was received by 85.1%. 34.3% reported no further educational plans. 17.3% (50) returned for a scheduled postpartum visit. Mothers with a prior history of a premature birth or miscarriage were more likely to return postpartum compared to mothers with a first or prior birth. The differences are marginally significant. None of the mothers with a prior abortion returned. 34.9% of the returning teen mothers were more likely to have had prenatal care. Returning mothers also were a larger percentage of those with no future educational plans. 13.4% of returning mothers had an available social support system. Country of origin was not associated with support systems, prenatal care, return status, educational plans, pregnancy history, or current birth outcome. Out of the 50 returning, 20 were Mexican-born and married. Only Mexican marital status was found to be a significant variable explaining differences. Marital status had no effect on the 26 US native-born returnees. 92% of the Mexican-born teens were married and had a support system. The most dramatic feature of this study is the high level of noncompliance among both US-born and Mexican-born adolescents. There were few distinguishing features between these two groups. Return status was affected by very few features and was achieved by a very small percentage of the study population. The suggestion is made that poverty, a lack of health insurance, and poor knowledge of English, as representative of cultural dissimilarity, may be responsible for poor use of preventive care.     

Report of the ACA Ethics Committee: 1993–1994

The activities of the American Counseling Association (ACA) Ethics Committee are reviewed for the year 1993–1994. Summary data of ethical complaints and formal inquiries received during the year are presented followed by a brief discussion of trends noted. Updated information about the revision of the ACA Ethical Standards and the Policies and Procedures for Processing Complaints of Ethical Violations is also provided.     

Towards reflexive practice: Engaging participants as co-researchers or co-analysts in psychological inquiry

This paper considers some of the implications of reflexivity for the practice of psychological research. After a brief consideration of the theoretical background to a concern with reflexivity, the paper goes on to examine how various researchers have attempted to incorporate components of reflexivity in their research practice. While a group of sociologists of science have operationalized reflexivity by self-conscious concern for their own role in the construction of social—scientific knowledge, new paradigm co-operative inquirers interpret a need for reflexivity by including their participants as fully self-reflexive co-researchers. Mulkay's suggestion for a dialogic analytical exchange with one's participants is also considered. The second half of the paper illustrates an attempt at reflexive practice in the authors' own research. This was a project concerned with identity change during the transition to motherhood, and aimed to allow the women a strong hand in helping to shape the project's direction. Preliminary analysis of a woman's data was taken back to her for her comments, and her reflections on the data were incorporated in the final case study. A detailed example of the investigator and participant's discussion of a piece of data is provided.     

Tests of human olfactory function: Principal components analysis suggests that most measure a common source of variance

It is not known whether nominally different olfactory tests actually measure dissimilar perceptual attributes. In this study, we administered nine olfactory tests, including tests of odor identification, discrimination, detection, memory, and suprathreshold intensity and pleasantness perception, to 97 healthy subjects. Aprincipal components analysis performed on the intercorrelation matrix revealed four meaningful components. The first was comprised of strong primary loadings from most of the olfactory test measures, whereas the second was comprised of primary loadings from intensity ratings given to a set of suprathreshold odorant concentrations. The third and fourth components had primary loadings that reflected, respectively, mean suprathreshold pleasantness ratings and a response bias measure derived from a yes/no odor identification signal detection task. In an effort to adjust for potential confounding influences of age, gender, smoking, and years of schooling on the component structure, a matrix of residuals from a multiple regression analysis, which included these variables, was also analyzed. A similar component pattern emerged. Overall, these findings suggest, in healthy subjects spanning a wide age range, that (1) a number of nominally distinct tests of olfactory function are measuring a common source of variance, and (2) some suprathreshold odor intensity and pleasantness rating tests may be measuring sources of variance different from this common source.     

Helping Unrelated Strangers: Physical and Psychological Reactions to the Bone Marrow Donation Process Among Anonymous Donors1

The development of models that predict outcomes of voluntary action is important for practitioners who manage large groups of volunteers. In accordance with this goal, a path model was generated linking predonation characteristics of volunteer marrow donors to postdonation physical and psychological reactions. Questionnaire data were collected from 343 individuals registered to donate marrow to unrelated strangers at 3 time points: shortly predonation, shortly postdonation, and 1-year post- donation. Although donors had generally positive reactions to donation, a substantial minority reported ambivalence about donating, physical difficulty with donation, and negative psychological reactions postdonation. In addition, our data suggest that predonation ambivalence is a central predictor of postdonation reactions, even after other donor characteristics are taken into account. These results have practical implications for the recruitment of volunteers, and suggest important variables to be considered in evaluating potential bone marrow donors.