Arbitrariness and the death penalty: how the defendant's appearance during trial influences capital jurors' punishment decision

This paper examines the impact of the defendant's appearance during the trial on capital jurors' punishment decision. The data used in this analysis were gathered by the Capital Jury Project (CJP), a national program of research on the decision-making of capital jurors. A series of multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted using four aggravating circumstances related to the killing and eight defendant appearance variables as predictors of jurors' punishment decision at three points during the capital trial: (1) after the punishment phase ended, but before formal deliberation began; (2) when the first vote was taken on punishment at jury deliberations; and (3) at the final vote on punishment. Results indicated that when the defendant appeared emotionally involved during the trial (i.e. sorry and sincere) jurors either favored a life sentence or were undecided about punishment; however, when the defendant appeared emotionally uninvolved during the trial (i.e. bored) jurors either sought a death sentence or remained undecided. Policy implications will be discussed.     

Memory for time: How people date events

The effect of different formats on the accuracy of dating news and the distribution of personal events was examined in four conditions. In the first, participants had to date events in the absolute time format (e.g., "July 2004"), and in the second, they had to date events in the relative time format (e.g., "3 weeks ago"). In the other conditions, they were asked to choose between the two formats. We found a small backward telescoping effect for recent news events and a large forward telescoping effect for remote events. Events dated in the absolute time format were more accurate than those dated in the relative time format. Furthermore, participants preferred to date news events with the relative time format and personal events with the absolute time format, as well as preferring to date remote events in the relative time format and recent events in the absolute time format.     

Homelessness in the United States: Assessing Changes in Prevalence and Public Opinion, 1993–2001

A national survey was administered in 1993-1994 (N = 360) and repeated in 2001 (N = 435) to assess the prevalence of homelessness as well as attitudes, opinions and knowledge regarding homelessness. No significant changes in prevalence were found, despite a strong US economy during most of the 7-8 year period. Respondents in 2001 had less stereotyped views of homeless people and were more supportive of services, but came to see homelessness as a less serious problem that was less often due to economic factors. This "mixed" set of findings may reflect both beliefs on the benefits of a good economy and an increased awareness of the complexity of homelessness. Across the surveys, younger, female, liberal, and less wealthy respondents demonstrated more sympathetic attitudes towards homeless people.     

Previewing the neighborhood: the role of orthographic neighbors as parafoveal previews in reading

In 2 experiments, a boundary technique was used with parafoveal previews that were identical to a target (e.g., sleet), a word orthographic neighbor (sweet), or an orthographically matched nonword (speet). In Experiment 1, low-frequency words in orthographic pairs were targets, and high-frequency words were previews. In Experiment 2, the roles were reversed. In Experiment 1, neighbor words provided as much preview benefit as identical words and greater benefit than nonwords, whereas in Experiment 2, neighbor words provided no greater preview benefit than nonwords. These results indicate that the frequency of a preview influences the extraction of letter information without setting up appreciable competition between previews and targets. This is consistent with a model of word recognition in which early stages largely depend on excitation of letter information, and competition between lexical candidates becomes important only in later stages.     

Cocaine addiction and personality: A mathematical model

The existence of a close relation between personality and drug consumption is recognized, but the corresponding causal connection is not well known. Neither is it well known whether personality exercises an influence predominantly at the beginning and development of addiction, nor whether drug consumption produces changes in personality. This paper presents a dynamic mathematical model of personality and addiction based on the unique personality trait theory (UPTT) and the general modelling methodology. This model attempts to integrate personality, the acute effect of drugs, and addiction. The UPTT states the existence of a unique trait of personality called extraversion, understood as a dimension that ranges from impulsive behaviour and sensation‐seeking (extravert pole) to fearful and anxious behaviour (introvert pole). As a consequence of drug consumption, the model provides the main patterns of extraversion dynamics through a system of five coupled differential equations. It combines genetic extraversion, as a steady state, and dynamic extraversion in a unique variable measured on the hedonic scale. The dynamics of this variable describes the effects of stimulant drugs on a short‐term time scale (typical of the acute effect); while its mean time value describes the effects of stimulant drugs on a long‐term time scale (typical of the addiction effect). This understanding may help to develop programmes of prevention and intervention in drug misuse.     

Reading development in agglutinative languages: Evidence from beginning,intermediate, and adult Basque readers

Do typological properties of language, such as agglutination (i.e., the morphological process of adding affixes to the lexeme of a word), have an impact on the development of visual word recognition? To answer this question, we carried out an experiment in which beginning, intermediate, and adult Basque readers (n = 32 each, average age = 7, 11, and 22 years, respectively) needed to read correctly versus incorrectly inflected words embedded in sentences. Half of the targets contained high-frequency stems, and the other half contained low-frequency stems. To each stem, four inflections of different lengths were attached (-a, -ari, -aren, and -arentzat, i.e., inflectional sequences). To test whether the process of word recognition was modulated by the knowledge of word structure in the language, half of the participants’ native language was Basque and the other half’s native language was Spanish. Children showed robust effects of frequency and length of inflection that diminished with age. In addition, the effect of length of inflection was modulated by the frequency of the stem and by the native language. Taken together, these results suggest that word recognition develops from a decoding strategy to a direct lexical access strategy and that this process is modulated by children’s knowledge of the inflectional structure of words from the beginning of their reading experience.     

The Validity and Structure of Culture‐Level Personality Scores: Data From Ratings of Young Adolescents

ABSTRACT We examined properties of culture‐level personality traits in ratings of targets (N=5,109) ages 12 to 17 in 24 cultures. Aggregate scores were generalizable across gender, age, and relationship groups and showed convergence with culture‐level scores from previous studies of self‐reports and observer ratings of adults, but they were unrelated to national character stereotypes. Trait profiles also showed cross‐study agreement within most cultures, 8 of which had not previously been studied. Multidimensional scaling showed that Western and non‐Western cultures clustered along a dimension related to Extraversion. A culture‐level factor analysis replicated earlier findings of a broad Extraversion factor but generally resembled the factor structure found in individuals. Continued analysis of aggregate personality scores is warranted.     

The Relationships of Perceived Motivational Climate to Cohesion and Collective Efficacy in Elite Female Teams

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships of perceived motivational climate to cohesion and collective efficacy in elite female teams. A total of 124 basketball and handball athletes completed two season measures (T1, T2). Relationships were examined at an individual level both statically and across time. Canonical correlations revealed that a combination of high perceptions of an ego-involving but low perceptions of a task-involving climate were associated with low perceptions of task cohesion at Time 1. High perceptions of a task-involving but low perceptions of an ego-involving climate were associated with higher perceptions of task cohesion and collective efficacy at Time 2. Moreover, low perceptions of an ego-involving and moderately low perceptions of a task-involving climate were associated with high perceptions of social cohesion at Time 2. Regression analyses including autoregressive influence indicated that a task-involving climate positively predicted variance in T2 group integration-task and collective efficacy after controlling for T1 scores. In contrast, an ego-involving climate negatively predicted changes in T2 athletes’ perceptions of social cohesion (individual attractions to the group-social [ATG-S], group integration-social [GI-S]) and group integration-task [GI-T] after controlling for T1 scores. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Three decades of lay epistemics: The why,how, and who of knowledge formation

A conceptual integration and review are presented of three separate research programmes informed by the theory of lay epistemics (Kruglanski, 1989 Kruglanski, A. W. 1989. Lay epistemics and human knowledge: Cognitive and motivational bases, New York: Plenum. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). They respectively address the “why”, “how”, and “who” questions about human knowledge formation. The “why” question is treated in work on the need for cognitive closure that propels epistemic behaviour and affects individual, interpersonal, and group phenomena. The “how” question is addressed in work on the unimodel (Kruglanski, Pierro, Mannetti, Erb, & Chun, 2007 Kruglanski, A. W., Pierro, A., Mannetti, L., Erb, H. P. and Chun, W. Y. 2007. “On the parameters of social judgement”. In Advances in experimental social psychology, Edited by: Zanna, M. P. Vol. 39, 255–296. New York: Academic Press.  [Google Scholar]) depicting the process of drawing conclusions from the “information given”. The “who” question is addressed in work on “epistemic authority” highlighting the centrality of source effects (including oneself as a source) in human epistemic behaviour. These separate research paradigms explore facets of epistemic behaviour that jointly produce human knowledge, of essential significance to people's’ individual and social functioning.