“I Had a Confidence Epiphany!”: Obstacles to Combating Post-Identification Confidence Inflation

Research shows that eyewitnesses often become more confident with their selections from a lineup over time, a problem labeled "confidence inflation." Wells et al. (1998) Law and Human Behavior, 22, 603-647 suggested that eyewitnesses provide a confidence statement immediately following their selection to capture an unadulterated measure of confidence. Three experiments tested the effectiveness of introducing such a statement to combat the effects of confidence inflation on mock-juror judgments. All experiments provided evidence that the attributions participants formed about the eyewitness' confidence inflation differentially impacted their judgments. Although mock-jurors generally discredited eyewitnesses who showed confidence inflation and sometimes lowered probability of guilt ratings for the defendant, a clear exception occurred when mock-jurors attributed the inflation to an epiphany. Use of post-identification confidence statements to decrease the impact of confidence inflation in the courtroom may be insufficient.     

An ethics ensemble: abortion, Thomson, Finnis and the case of the violin-player

Abstract.  This paper considers approaches to the ethics of abortion and putative links to "rights" debates. In particular, it revisits two papers on the topic from the early 1970's, written by Judith Jarvis Thomson and John Finnis respectively. Consideration of the discourse produced by these papers to some extent reveals the strategic importance of linguistic and conceptual organisation—the rhetorical forces underlying claims to disinterested, analytical standing. In particular, the paper reviews the practical ethics analogy proposed by Thomson; the deployment of "Hohfeldian" rights analysis by John Finnis, the link to the abortion debate and the broader implications of such deployment in its relation to current "rights" discourse.     

Assessing the Risk of Domestic Violence Reoffending: A Validation Study

Little research has been conducted to validate available instruments for assessing the risk of domestic violence reoffending, especially research using some form of prospective design. This study uses a prospective design to determine the reliability and validity of the Domestic Violence Screening Instrument (DVSI). The analysis is based on a sample of 1,465 male domestic violence offenders selected consecutively over a 9-month period. Data on reoffending were collected in a 6-month follow-up period from a subsample of the victims (N = 125) of these perpetrators and from official records for all perpetrators during an 18-month follow-up period. The empirical results suggest that the DVSI was administered reliably, and they provide significant evidence of the concurrent, discriminant, and predictive validity of this instrument. Implications for further research and utilization of the DVSI are discussed.     

Motives for suicide--a study of Australian suicide notes

Analysis of a large sample of suicide notes from 262 suicides in Australia found that men less often had escape from pain as a motive for their suicides and more often had love/romantic problems. The suicides of older persons were more often motivated by escape from pain and less often had love/romantic problems.     

Explaining a health care paradox

The paradox of a statistically weak linkage between physician density and measures of health based on outcome has recently received much attention because of its importance to health planning policy. It is demonstrated here that the linkage is stronger than indicated by previous studies if the statistical model is more carefully specified. A single case-type is chosen so that the impact of physician services is not filtered out by the aggregation process and a quantitative variable measuring case severity is derived. When statistical techniques are applied to correct for case-risk and for the inherent heteroscedasticity in observed mortality rates across states and time, the positive effect of physician density on health is shown to be statistically highly significant. Thus the apparently paradoxical findings in previous studies may be a result of failing to correct not only for differences in case severity but also for variations in sample errors. Also, even though the magnitude of physician impact is small compared to non-medical variables, an exploratory estimate of the impact of government programs focused on prevention suggests that present allocations between prevention and treatment may approximate optimality.The project upon which this paper is based was performed pursuant to Research Grant HS01036 from the Bureau of Health Services Research and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The author wishes to acknowledge the advice and encouragement of Llad Phillips and H. E. Frech.