Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern

Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern . By James Vernon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), AU$32.95 (pb), distributed in Australia by Footprint Books.     

Cold-blooded women can detect lies with greater accuracy than other women

Lies are notoriously difficult to detect. But it appears that some people are better at accomplishing this task than others even though the factors contributing to deception detection accuracy are not well understood. This study explored the influence of empathy on the detection of deception as a function of the detectors’ gender while dark personality traits were statistically controlled. Eighty men and 80 women were requested to judge whether individuals viewed in videos were giving their true opinion or not on current debatable issues (50% truthful and 50% deceptive narratives). Judges were divided into four groups according to their gender and their degree of empathy, as assessed using the Questionnaire Measure of Emotional Empathy. It was found that women with lower levels of empathy distinguished false from true opinions better than women with higher empathy, whereas no such difference was found in men. These results suggest that the degree of empathy in women influences their ability to detect deception and supports recent studies showing that emotional skills negatively affect deception detection ability. We suggest that less empathic women are less affected by emotional contagion and thus may be more able to focus on non-emotional cues that might reveal deception.     

Avoiding overstating the strength of forensic evidence: Shrunk likelihood ratios/Bayes factors

When strength of forensic evidence is quantified using sample data and statistical models, a concern may be raised as to whether the output of a model overestimates the strength of evidence. This is particularly the case when the amount of sample data is small, and hence sampling variability is high. This concern is related to concern about precision. This paper describes, explores, and tests three procedures which shrink the value of the likelihood ratio or Bayes factor toward the neutral value of one. The procedures are: (1) a Bayesian procedure with uninformative priors, (2) use of empirical lower and upper bounds (ELUB), and (3) a novel form of regularized logistic regression. As a benchmark, they are compared with linear discriminant analysis, and in some instances with non-regularized logistic regression. The behaviours of the procedures are explored using Monte Carlo simulated data, and tested on real data from comparisons of voice recordings, face images, and glass fragments.     

A SOP TO THE "OI POLLOI": CAPITAL, LABOUR AND THE REFORM OF NEW SOUTH WALES MARITIME ADMINISTRATION 1867 TO 1914

Abstract: In 1867 NSW maritime services were rationalised by the formation of a Marine Board comprising government appointees and elected representatives of shipowners. Following several scandals relating to Marine Board administration and an inquiry by the new Public Service Board sitting as a Royal Commission, the Marine Board was replaced in 1899 by a Navigation Department. In 1900 Sydney wharfage was nationalised in response to the bubonic plague outbreak of 1899 and placed under the control of a Sydney Harbour Trust. This dual structure persisted throughout the pre-war period. Calls came from the Greater Sydney movement for wharfage to be placed under the control of an enlarged city council, and from the labour movement of trust tenants and employees for the trust to operate on non-commercial principles. These pressures were successfully resisted by the trust commissioners, despite the presence of a Labor government after 1910. In their administration the commissioners of the Trust favoured capital, but their image of technocratic impartiality enabled them to constrain Labor governments and to carry through substanial extensions of state activity when this was in the interests of capital as a whole.     

PARENTAL ABDUCTION JUSTIFICATION AS EGO DEFENSE

Abducting parents sometimes justify their actions as a form of ego defense. This brief report discusses observations that may be helpful to practitioners involved in resolving custody and visitation disputes following parental abduction.     

THE ADMINISTRATIVE IMPLICATIONS OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION LEGISLATION

Abstract: Freedom of information legislation is now an item on the political agenda. In the debate about the scope of such legislation, however, some important administrative questions have been ignored. Relevant overseas experience, particularly that of North America, has not been given the attention it deserves. By 1972 the Labor Party had made "open government" an electoral issue, although four distinct notions were involved in this concept, namely administrative review; public comment by public servants; more helpful institutions; and autonomous access to information in institutions. However the efforts of the Labor government during 1972-75 to implement freedom of information proposals foundered partly because issues of procedures, cost and personnel were not perceived as being salient; and the situation has not changed much since. Questions about the administration of freedom of information legislation are discussed in relation to the recommendations of the Coombs Report, and it is argued that the matter needs to be approached in new ways, one of which is through action research.     

Laboratory simulation and bias in the study of juror behavior

Theoretical speculation and meta-analysis suggest that the strength of treatment effects (e.g., defendant attractiveness) may become weaker as the experimental simulation becomes more realistic and complex. In order to test this hypothesis, various levels of biasing pretrial publicity were combined with both a short and a long trial. Results provided no support for the contention that treatment effects act differently as a function of the length of the stimulus trial in which they are embedded. Rather, it is suggested that treatments used in simplified jury simulations may often show similar effects when examined in more realistic, complex settingsif the treatments are comparable.This research was supported by NSF Research grant No. SES 8419944 to the second author, John Carroll, and James Alfini. Portions were presented at the Midwestern Psychological Association Convention, Chicago, May 7–9, 1987.