The Influence of Perpetrator Exposure Time and Weapon Presence/Timing on Eyewitness Confidence and Accuracy

Crimes can occur in a matter of seconds, with little time available for an eyewitness to encode a perpetrator's face. The presence of a weapon can further exacerbate this situation. Few studies have featured mock crimes of short duration, especially with a weapon manipulation. We conducted an experiment to investigate the impact of weapon presence and short perpetrator exposure times (3 vs. 10 seconds) on eyewitness confidence and accuracy. We found that recall concerning the perpetrator was worse when a weapon was present, replicating the weapon focus effect. However, there was no effect on eyewitness identification accuracy. Calibration analyses revealed that all conditions produced a strong confidence–accuracy relationship. Confidence–accuracy characteristic curves illustrated almost perfect accuracy for suspect identifications at the highest levels of confidence. We conclude that weapon presence during a brief crime does not necessarily result in negative consequences for either eyewitness identification accuracy or the confidence–accuracy relationship. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Practicing Community Psychology Through Mixed Methods Participatory Research Designs

Community psychologists address social inequalities and problems by employing ecological principles, multiple methodologies, and participatory approaches to empower individuals, organizations, and communities to organize action and systems change. This article aims to contribute to mixed methods literature by presenting three models of mixed methods participatory research across a variety of geographic and sociocultural contexts. The models outline participatory processes and points of qualitative and quantitative data integration. Challenges related to the interplay between participatory approaches and mixed methods studies as well as implications on social science research are discussed.     

RELATIONSHIP QUALITY AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN WOMEN'S SAME-SEX RELATIONSHIPS: THE ROLE OF MINORITY STRESS

Despite a large body of literature addressing relationship quality and domestic violence in women's same-sex relationships, few studies have empirically examined how stress specific to living as a lesbian or bisexual woman might correlate with these relationship variables. Degree of outness, internalized homophobia, lifetime and recent experiences of discrimination, butch/femme identity, relationship quality, and lifetime and recent experiences of domestic violence were assessed in a sample of 272 predominantly European American lesbian and bisexual women. Lesbian and bisexual women were found to be comparable on most relationship variables. In bivariate analyses, minority stress variables (internalized homophobia and discrimination) were associated with lower relationship quality and both domestic violence perpetration and victimization. Outness and butch/femme identity were largely unrelated to relationship variables. Path analysis revealed that relationship quality fully mediated the relationship between internalized homophobia and recent domestic violence.     

Clinical and demographic features of the online counselling client population

The purpose of this research was to determine the demographics and characteristics of clients seeking online counselling over an eight‐month period of clinical online practice. Two hundred and seventeen clients seeking Internet counselling completed a Counselling Application and a Life History Questionnaire. The characteristics of the relatively new client population include the following categories: gender, age groups, martial status, education, primary reason for seeking online therapy, secondary issues, frequency of email exchanges, and online vs. face‐to‐face counselling preferences. Implications for online counselling practice are discussed.     

Who is most likely to fat talk? A social comparison perspective

Negative talk about food, weight, or the body that occurs commonly among women – fat talk – is gaining increasing attention. Whereas its negative eating pathology and body esteem correlates have received continued empirical validation, what is not yet known is who is most likely to fat talk. We propose that social comparison processes underlie and motivate much of fat talk. In a sample of 143 college women, we found evidence for the role of social comparison. First, having a stronger tendency to socially compare directly predicts fat talk. Second, as a woman's body image concerns increase, her likelihood of engaging in fat talk increases, and this is intensified if she has a greater tendency to socially compare. Finally, social comparison propensity begins to exert its exacerbating effects at surprisingly low levels of body image concern. Results are discussed in terms of the advantages of using a social comparison perspective to better understand fat talk.     

Paranormal belief and the conjunction fallacy: Controlling for temporal relatedness and potential surprise differentials in component events

Recent research suggests paranormal believers are especially prone to the ‘conjunction fallacy’. The current study extends this work by presenting believers and non‐believers with eight paranormal plus eight non‐paranormal scenarios. Participants were given either a paranormal or virtually identical non‐paranormal version of each scenario. Of these, half incorporated component events which were (virtually) co‐occurring with half including components which were temporally disjointed. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA; controlling for gender and maths/stats/psychology qualifications) found believers made more conjunction errors than non‐believers. Neither event type (paranormal vs. non‐paranormal) nor components' temporal relationship (co‐occurring vs. disjointed) had a significant effect on conjunction biases. Believers' tendency to produce larger conjunctive estimates was unrelated to group differences in component probability estimates (surprise values) and further, could not be attributed to group differences in the perceived functional relationship between component and conjunctive events. Possible explanations are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Family Dynamics and Changes in Sibling of Origin Relationship After Lesbian and Gay Sexual Orientation Disclosure

Despite the knowledge that the entire family system plays a role in the development of an individual, research on the disclosure of LG sexual orientation to the family of origin is mostly concentrated on the parental reaction. Siblings are rarely a focus of such research. Thus, the purpose of this qualitative study was to provide an understanding of the experiences of 14 heterosexual biological siblings of LG persons after they learn that their sister or brother is LG. More specifically, this study explored the changing family dynamics with a focus on the sibling of a LG sister or brother and the ways in which sexual orientation disclosure affects the sibling relationship. Data analysis identified ten themes: personal reaction to disclosure, suspecting sibling was LG based on stereotyping, protectiveness/concern, gay equals being different, anger/disappointment in how parent(s) handled LG sibling coming out, sibling relationship changes, increased comfort with having a LG sibling, disclosure of LG sibling sexual orientation to others, dealing with and challenging heterosexism, and changes to self as a result of sibling sexual orientation.     

Searching for the sequential line-up advantage: a distinctiveness explanation

Gronlund ( 2005 ) proposed that one factor leading to a sequential line-up advantage could be the greater likelihood of recollecting distinctive information about a perpetrator when using a sequential line-up. Since then questions have been raised about the robustness of the sequential advantage and the possible moderating role of line-up fairness and suspect position. We manipulated these factors as well as suspect/target distinctiveness in two experiments. A sequential advantage occurred only after encoding a distinctive target, both for biased line-ups (Experiment 1) and fair line-ups (Experiment 2). Remember-Know results were consistent with the greater use of a recall-to-reject strategy in target-absent sequential line-ups. This provided support for the first process-based explanation of the sequential line-up advantage. No consistent position effects were found, but this might be due to the line-up recognition paradigm used, in which each participant viewed a line-up for each of several targets. Theory-based explorations of eyewitness identification are necessary to continue to delineate the underpinnings of the sequential line-up advantage.