Determining the Refractive Index Variation within Panes of Vehicle Windshield Glass

Refractive indices of seven double‐paned vehicle windshields were measured to assess the variation across the pane of glass and to evaluate collection techniques for known glass standards by comparing false negative rates. Measurements were made using a Foster and Freeman GRIM3 instrument, and a minimum of 240 measurements were made per pane. The mean SD of the windshields was 0.00004. It was further determined that collecting a known sample from two different sections of a shattered windshield gave the lowest rate of false negatives when using ± 2 standard deviations to estimate the RI variation of the known glass. Additionally, refractive indices often were highest in the center of the windshield and decreased toward the left and right edges; in approximately half the sample set, the two panes of a single windshield were differentiated by one or more properties.     

The Salience of Social Contextual Factors in Appraisals of Police Interactions with Citizens: A Randomized Factorial Experiment

Objectives

Prior research indicates that public assessments of the manner in which the police exercise their authority are a key antecedent of judgments about the legitimacy of the police. In this study, the importance of context in influencing people’s assessment of police wrongdoing is examined.

Methods

A randomized factorial experiment was used to test how respondents perceive and evaluate police–citizens interactions along a range of types of situations and encounters. 1,361 subjects were surveyed on factors hypothesized to be salient influences on how citizens perceive and evaluate citizen interactions with police. Subjects viewed videos of actual police–citizen encounters and were asked for their evaluations of these observed encounters. Contextual primes were used to focus subjects on particular aspects of the context within which the encounter occurs.

Results

Structural equation models revealed that social contextual framing factors, such as the climate of police–community relations and the legality of the stop that led to the encounter, influence citizen appraisals of police behavior with effects comparable in size to and even larger than demographic variables such as education, race, and income.

Conclusions

These results suggest that the understandings and perceptions that people bring to a situation are important determinants of their assessment of police fairness. The police can positively influence citizen interpretations of police actions by striving to create a climate of positive police–community relationships in cities.     

Forecasting Errors in the Averseness of Apologizing

Apologizing is often seen as the appropriate response after a transgression for perpetrators. Yet, despite the positive effects that apologies elicit after situations of conflict, they are not always delivered easily. We argue that this is due—at least in part—to perpetrators overestimating the averseness of apologizing, thus committing a forecasting error. Across two laboratory experiments and one autobiographical recall study, we demonstrate that perpetrators overestimate the averseness they will experience when apologizing compared to the averseness they experience when they actually apologize. Moreover, we show that this effect is driven by a misconstrual of the effects of an apology. Perpetrators overestimate the potentially negative effects of apologizing while simultaneously underestimating the potentially positive effects of apologizing. This forecasting error may have a negative effect on the initiation of the reconciliation process, due to perpetrators believing that apologizing is more averse than it actually is.     

Interlocal Agreements and Multilateral Institutions: Mitigating Coordination Problems of Self-Organized Collective Action

ABSTRACT

In the United States, competition among cities for economic development tends to be the norm. Cities are also collaborating more to improve their economic advantage. However, transaction costs inhibit various of interlocal agreements from being formed. This study examines the role of multilateral institutions in facilitating interlocal agreements for economic development. An analysis of survey data collected from city governments in eleven US metropolitan areas highlights the importance of regional institutions in moderating the effect of coordination problems on the formation of developmental joint venture agreements. The findings complement extant research on the governance mechanisms that mitigate transaction costs of collective action.     

The Dynamics of State Policy Liberalism, 1936–2014

Applying a dynamic latent‐variable model to data on 148 policies collected over eight decades (1936–2014), we produce the first yearly measure of the policy liberalism of U.S. states. Our dynamic measure of state policy liberalism marks an important advance over existing measures, almost all of which are purely cross‐sectional and thus cannot be used to study policy change. We find that, in the aggregate, the policy liberalism of U.S. states steadily increased between the 1930s and 1970s and then largely plateaued. The policy liberalism of most states has remained stable in relative terms, though several states have shifted considerably over time. We also find surprisingly little evidence of multidimensionality in state policy outputs. Our new estimates of state policy liberalism have broad application to the study of political development, representation, accountability, and other important issues in political science.