Prior knowledge influences interpretations of eyewitness confidence statements: ‘The witness picked the suspect,they must be 100% sure%

When an eyewitness identifies a suspect from a lineup, it is important to know how certain they are about the decision. Even though eyewitnesses are likely to express certainty with words, past research shows that verbal confidence statements (e.g. ‘I’m pretty sure’) are prone to systematic misinterpretation. Until now, no one has examined how an evaluator's prior knowledge, such as which lineup member is the police suspect, influences their interpretation of eyewitness confidence about a lineup identification. Experiments 1 and 3 show that participants perceived the identical statement of confidence as meaning a higher and lower level of certainty, respectively, when the eyewitness's selection either matched or mismatched the police's suspect. Experiment 2 shows that these effects generally persist when the bias manipulation is manipulated between-subjects. Finally, Experiment 3 finds that clarifying the witness's statement with numeric information (e.g. I’m 80% sure) does not eliminate the influence of biasing information.     

Kill,Capture, or Defend? The Effectiveness of Specific and General Counterterrorism Tactics Against the Global Threats of the Post-9/11 Era

This article examines the effectiveness of contemporary counterterrorism strategy in the global fight against terrorism from 2001 to 2011. We seek to maximize the comparative approach more than most existing studies by examining three tactics (killing, capturing, and defending) applied at three scopes (leader, operational, and broad) on three levels (global, movement [jihadi], and organizational [al-Qaeda and Taliban]), while also measuring effectiveness along several quantitative, qualitative, and spatial dimensions. Drawing from resource theory (and its derived analytical approaches) and empirical terrorism studies, we formulate competing hypotheses that are quantitatively tested using a dataset with several original aspects. We find that both killing and capturing can have large effects but these effects vary based on both states' and terrorists' targeting strategies. The most interesting specific findings are that drone strikes seem counterproductive for counterterrorism while renditions seem effective. However, these effects were dwarfed by those of increased defenses, which reduce attacks in the West while redirecting them to other areas in the world. While we find the theory mostly sound, though in need of refocus, we believe current policy trends foretell an increase in terrorist activity in the coming years.     

Efficiency,Incentives, and Transformational Leadership: Understanding Collaboration Preferences in the Public Sector

In the public sector, participant attitudes are an important determinant of the success of inter-organizational collaboration initiatives. In this study, a model of employee willingness to collaborate is proposed in which the influence of transformational leadership is determined in part by the performance orientation of the organizational context in which it is enacted. The theoretical model is tested empirically using survey data collected from public employees in South Korea and regression-based Monte Carlo simulation. The analysis suggests that the effect of transformational leadership is amplified by an organization’s emphasis on internal efficiency and its use of performance-based incentives, factors that themselves have independent positive and negative effects, respectively, on attitudes about collaboration. This study links transformational leadership to an increasingly necessary process in the public sector and highlights its context-dependent influence. Implications of the findings are discussed, including the notion that the efficacy of tactics adopted to support inter-organizational collaboration may be a function of their consistency with the realities of established organizational policies and processes.     

Temporal trends in US counterterrorism sting operations, 1989–2014

How has the US government’s use of counterterrorism sting operations changed over the past quarter-century? Have major terrorist attacks led to more frequent sting operations and/or more frequent entrapment – and if so, have such changes been temporary or long-lasting? Have different types of terrorism provoked different reactions? This study answers these questions using a database of US terrorism prosecutions occurring between 1989 and 2014, each coded for 20 indicators of entrapment. We analyse temporal trends, and in particular, compare the government’s responses to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 terror attacks. Results indicate that after the Oklahoma City bombing, the number of sting operations against right-wing extremists doubled, while the average number of entrapment indicators dropped. This suggests that authorities in the 1990s responded to the growing threat of right-wing terrorism appropriately: conducting more investigations while avoiding entrapment. After 9/11, sting operations against suspected jihadi terrorists rapidly increased, but in this case, they featured high numbers of entrapment indicators through the end of the study period, suggesting widespread and persistent entrapment. Reasons for this difference, and for the government’s failure to reduce entrapment in response to widespread criticism over the past decade, are analysed.     

When Can Politicians Scare Citizens Into Supporting Bad Policies?

Many people claim that politicians use fear to manipulate citizens. Using a model, we examine how select attributes of fear affect a politician's ability to scare citizens into supporting policies that they would otherwise reject. In the model, the politician can alert citizens to the presence of a threat. But his claim need not be true. How citizens respond to this claim differs from most game-theoretic models. Our representation of this response follows from research in psychology, has distinct conscious and subconscious components, and does not presume efficient processing (i.e., Bayesian updating). Our conclusions counter popular claims about when politicians will use fear to manipulate citizens. They also highlight issues (abstract, distant) and leaders (secretive) for which recent empirical findings about how fear affects politics will—and will not—generalize to other cases.     

SPD and PDS relationships

This article examines the mutual relationship of SPD and PDS. In the past, the relationship between Communists and Social Democrats has been tense, even if the 1970s and 1980s saw a slight improvement. After the collapse of the GDR and the onset of German unity ‐ the SED had meanwhile become the PDS ‐ a coalition between the two parties was unthinkable. The SPD at least was strictly opposed to it. Even at the eve of the 1998 federal elections, nobody seriously considers a coalition at national level but some forces in the SPD have begun to advocate coalitions with the PDS at regional level in the new Lander. This strategy enjoys the backing of the PDS. It is argued that for the SPD to choose this ‘French way’ of ousting the CDU from government is a serious error, both with regard to the functioning of democracy and to SPD strategy.