The Jury Persuaded (and Not): Computer Animation in the Courtroom

In two experiments, we examined the persuasiveness of computer animation on juror decision making by comparing animation to diagrams in two mock trials—a plane crash case and a car accident case. The persuasiveness of the animation on verdicts was dependent on the case; in the plane crash case, participants rendered verdicts in favor of the side presenting the animation. In the car accident case, the animation had no effect on verdicts. The role of familiarity with the depicted scenario is discussed as a possible explanation for the differing impact of animation. Additionally, jurors' expectations about the persuasiveness of animations were discrepant with the animations' actual influence on jurors' verdicts.     

Flashpoint: An Innovative Media Literacy Intervention For High‐Risk Adolescents

This paper describes the development and formative evaluation of a media literacy, media based intervention for high‐risk adolescents. The program described, Flashpoint, was developed to (1) moderate the influence of media presentations of violence, substance abuse and prejudice on adolescents; and t (2) teach participants cognitive skills which would enable them to resist impulses to engage in behavior involving violence, substance abuse or prejudice. The evaluation described studied the pilot testing of the program with three groups of adolescents (N=33) involved in the juvenile justice system: adolescents in a diversion program (first time, nonviolent offenders); adolescents on probation; and adolescents in residential custody of the Department of Youth Services. Qualitative findings are reviewed in detail.     

MASCULINITY AND DELINQUENCY

A strong positive association between masculinity and delinquency is on important assumption in theories which explain why (1) males are more delinquent than females and (2) females are becoming increasingly delin-quent. Self-report measures obtained from 1002 junior and senior high school students from a large Southeastern city constitute the data for an examination of the first of these relationships. Factor analytic procedures were used to identify the components of masculinity: leadership, aggressive-ness, competitiveness, ambitiousness, and successfulness. Separate models of masculinity, opportunity, attachment to conventional others, and belief in the moral validity of low are constructed for status, property, and aggressive offenses. For females, masculinity has no direct effects on any type of delinquency. For males, masculinity is directly related only to status offenses. The results are inconsistent with analyses of females' delinquency that emphasize their adoption of masculine characteristics.     

The Ideologies of Mediation: The Movement's Own Story

This paper has three aims. First, it describes the ideologies of six organizations that have been and continue to be prominent in the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) movement in the United States. These organizations all feature the use of mediation as a central component of their work and as a solution to larger social problems.
Second, it elaborates some points of similarity and difference in these ideologies in light of a debate that emerged in the late 1970's between "community" and "agency" models of mediation, that is, between programs that chose to closely affiliate with the formal justice system and those that chose not to. Several years after the start of this debate, we believe there are important points of convergence and divergence that have not received enough attention by those who advocate for or against alternative dispute processing.
Finally, the authors wish to use the opportunity this study provides to speculate more openly on the contemporary meaning of legal informalism and the ways in which formal and informal legal structures now seem to be linked.