Validity Beliefs and Ideology Can Influence Legal Case Judgments Differently

Jurors sometimes enter a case both with prior beliefs about its likely validity and with more general ideologies that are relevant to the case. Although prior validity beliefs may serve as heuristics, directly biasing decisions when cognitive capacity is low, we hypothesized that ideology may bias systematic thought even when cognitive capacity is high. This experiment studied simulated individual juror decisions in a sex-discrimination case, measuring validity beliefs about such cases as well as feminist ideology, and exposing participants to 1 of 3 case versions under time pressure or no time pressure. Validity beliefs had a direct, heuristic impact on judgment only under time pressure. However, feminist ideology had a mediated influence on judgment via valenced thoughts about the evidence, even under no time pressure. Also, people with initially proplaintiff beliefs judged a woman's sex-discrimination suit more negatively than did prodefendants if the evidence was weak. The results suggest that when jurors can fully process information, validity expectancies might backfire if not supported by case evidence, but ideology can have a more pervasive influence on the decision-making process.     

The Complexity of Tolerance and Intolerance Judgments: A Response to Gibson

In a recent paper, we posited that tolerance and intolerance judgments are characterized by two forms of variance. First, the distinction between tolerance and intolerance is dichotomous in that individuals are or are not willing to extend the full rights of citizenship to all others without exception. Second, among those not so willing, variance exists in the breadth and depth of their intolerance. James Gibson challenges our view, arguing that we have advanced a fundamental shift in how tolerance is conceptualized, and that this shift is not warranted empirically because very few Americans are tolerant under our definition. In this response, we first outline the rationale for why our view does not constitute a significant shift in the conceptualization of tolerance, but rather is merely an effort to pull the empirical treatment of tolerance into alignment with the concept’s common definition. Second, we explain that Gibson’s finding that few Americans are tolerant gains noteworthy meaning and significance from the view of tolerance we present. Lastly, we demonstrate that new insight on the antecedents of tolerance and intolerance emerges when analyses attend to the two-part structure of tolerance judgments highlighted in our research.     

The Preference Puzzle: Educational Differences in Racial-Political Attitudes

Education leads to racial liberalism in a great many instances. In this piece, I show that better educated whites are more racially liberal than less educated whites on issues involving minority preferences, with one notable exception. Better educated whites are significantly more opposed to affirmative action in university admissions than less educated whites. This is a puzzle, and my resolution of it is informed by group conflict theory and how university preferences evoke the group interests of better educated whites as they approach the issue. Additionally, I show that the group interests of less educated whites also are engaged by the issue. In the context of the survey I study, the class orientations of the less educated are roused, and, I argue, lower status individuals are encouraged to view university preferences as an opportunity to share the burden of affirmative action, contributing to the puzzling reversal in the relationship of education and racial-political attitudes.     

Post-Hurricane Katrina Racialized Explanations as a System Threat: Implications for Whites’ and Blacks’ Racial Attitudes

This experiment drew upon theoretical perspectives on group and system justification to examine whether exposure to media coverage arguing that racism was responsible for the ineffective Hurricane Katrina disaster response affected White and Black Americans’ intergroup attitudes. Consistent with a system justification perspective, Whites exposed to video clips arguing that the hurricane Katrina disaster response was due to racism displayed greater racial ingroup attachment and ingroup love compared to Whites exposed to videos conveying that the government’s incompetence was to blame for the disaster response. In contrast, Blacks displayed strong levels of ingroup attachment and ingroup love across both video conditions. This research highlights how insights from social psychology are valuable in understanding psychological responses to social justice-related events, such as the tragic response to hurricane Katrina.

Understanding Date Rape Attitudes and Behaviors: Exploring the Influence of Race,Gender, and Prior Sexual Victimization

This exploratory investigation examines the influence of race, gender, and prior sexual victimization on attitudes and behaviors related to date rape from a large sample of college students (n = 3,084) in the United States. The results of this study indicate that gender was a salient factor, with males more likely to subscribe to undesirable attitudes toward date rape and to engage in behaviors that increase the risk of both men and women perpetrating date rape. Findings also indicate that racial differences exist in that black students were less likely to subscribe to undesirable attitudes and to engage in sexual behaviors that increase the risk of perpetrating date rape than were white students. Finally, the analyses found previous sexual victimization experiences unexpectedly increased undesirable attitudes toward and behaviors associated with date rape. Implications of the results are discussed.     

POLICE CULTURE AND COERCION*

Researchers have long noted the link between police culture and coercion. To date, however, there have been no empirical studies of this relationship. Using data collected as part of a systematic social observation study of the police in Indianapolis, Indiana, and St. Petersburg, Florida, this research examines the relationship between traditional views of police culture—from an attitudinal perspective‐and coercion—from a behavioral perspective. After developing a classification scheme of officers' outlooks in the context of police culture, we examine the extent to which officers' alignment with cultural attitudes translates into differences in coercive behavior. The findings indicate that those officers who closely embody the values of the police culture are more coercive compared with those that differentially align with the culture, suggesting that police use of force is a function of officers' varying attitudinal commitments to the traditional view of police culture. The implications of these findings for policy and future research are considered.