24‐hours media

Democratically elected governments are having to respond to an increasingly media‐driven society. The pressures imposed by 24‐hour news media are unrelenting: growing demands for access and information show no sign of abating. Tony Blair and his personal spin doctor, the Downing Street director of communications, Alastair Campbell, are at the cutting edge in developing media techniques which seem likely to be tested as never before, as democracies around the world have to grapple with astute propagandists like Osama bin Laden. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

The influence of parents and peers on choices made by adolescents

Hypothetical situations in which an adolescent was faced with a choice of two possible alternatives, one favored by parents and the other favored by peers, were read by ninth- and twelfth-graders. Subjects were asked to pick the alternative most likely to be chosen by the adolescent in each situation. Responses were analyzed for tendency to choose parent- or peer-approved alternatives. Boys in the ninth grade chose the parent-approved alternative more often than either ninth-grade girls or twelfth-grade boys. Girls' responses tended to remain stable over the same period.Received her Ph.D. in experimental child psychology from the University of Illinois, Champaign. Current research interest is cognitive and personality development in childhood and adolescence.     

The power of presentation: How attire,cosmetics, and posture impact the source credibility of women expert witnesses

Gender stereotypes may negatively affect perceptions of women professionals' credibility, including forensic experts. This study investigated the impact of behavior-based and appearance-based factors on women expert witness's credibility. Jury-eligible adults were shown one of 16 conditions depicting a woman expert which varied based on combinations of three primary independent variables: (1) attire, (2) cosmetic use, and (3) posture. Expert attractiveness and participants' sexist attitudes served as covariates. Results revealed that women experts were seen as marginally more credible when wearing a skirt suit with a closed posture stance than when wearing a pant suit with a closed posture. Secondary analyses indicated expert attractiveness and participant sexist attitudes accounted for the most variability in credibility scores. Credibility of women expert witnesses may be impacted by irrelevant peripheral cues. Findings can inform discussions aimed at mitigating extraneous factors that inadvertently undermine the reception of women expert witness testimony.     

Attorneys,tell your clients to think before they post: Social media data may influence how evaluators view their parental fitness

Information from social media is used in evaluations of parental fitness with some regularity. Yet, research is lacking on perceptions of this information and no research has examined how social media data impacts forensic evaluators' opinions related to parental fitness. This study compared forensic evaluators' perceptions of data trustworthiness, usefulness, and initial opinion of parental fitness in a fictitious case in which parental fitness was questioned. Perceptions of a parent's behavior were compared across two types of data in which it was presented (an Instagram post or a medical record note) and across genders of the parent (mother or father) being hypothetically evaluated. As hypothesized, information documented on social media was viewed more critically than information documented by a healthcare provider. Further, information primarily referencing the father in the case was viewed as less trustworthy than information referencing the mother, which appeared influenced by evaluators' identified self-reported sexist attitudes. Results suggest that family law attorneys, regardless of which parent they are representing, should advise their clients of the risks to using social media.     

Eyewitnesses in the courtroom: a jury-level experimental examination of the impact of the Henderson instructions

Journal of Experimental Criminology - The New Jersey Supreme Court in New Jersey v. Henderson (2011) proposed judicial instructions designed to assist juries in evaluating eyewitness evidence. The...     

From Reagan to Trump: The Origins of US Neoliberal Protectionism

Donald Trump is often seen as a radical departure from the neoliberalism that has shaped recent American history and, at first glance, nowhere does this seem truer than on trade. Trump’s support for protectionism certainly seems to depart from neoliberalism, which we are used to thinking of as involving unqualified support for free trade. But should this really be seen as a departure? This paper argues that, instead, Trump’s trade policy should be seen a kind of ‘neoliberal protectionism’, which seeks to use the coercive power of the state to force other nations to conform to a market‐based economic logic. The origins of this neoliberal protectionism can be traced back to the 1980s when debates about foreign industrial policies first caused the United States to adopt a more aggressive approach to trade. From this perspective, Trump’s trade policy represents not a rejection of neoliberalism but an extreme articulation of it.