Hindsight bias and third-party consentors to warrantless police searches

Research on hindsight bias indicates that awareness of event outcome influences how individuals interpret information and form judgments. We extend this earlier work to suggest that the effect of this bias on lay perceptions of third-party consent to warrantless searchers of residences may be contingent upon the presence verus absence of the search target(the suspect). A study using random assignment to experimental conditions in a between-subjects design explored this possibility. The experiment indicated that hindsight bias in perceived rights of the third-party consentor is influenced, not only by search outcome, but also by a web of overlapping and potentially competing social obligations and personal prerogatives, the salience of which is influenced by situational dynamics.Portions of this research were reported in a panel session at the 1989 meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Reno.     

Books in review

His publications include The Ways Out: Utopian Communal Groups in an Age of Babylonand Gone From the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History.     

Chinese labor relations in a changing work environment

The work environment in Chinese factories is a unique combination of elements in socialist central planning, traditional kinship ties, and market competition. These factors have varying consequences on employees’ job satisfaction, work commitment and workplace interest articulation. Market reform changed the social contract between the government and workers. It brought higher wages, but less security and more market whip. The changing social contract had a mixed effect on work satisfaction and commitment, and resulted in increased managerial authority and declining bargaining power among workers. Data are drawn from a 1991–1992 enterprise employee survey in 100 firms.