Dialect on trial: use of African American Vernacular English influences juror appraisals*

ABSTRACT

We investigated the effect of dialect and race on juror decision making. Mock jurors read a summary of an ambiguous criminal case, which included audio of a defense witness (Study 1) or defendant (Study 2). Both speaker dialect [General American English (GAE)/African American Vernacular English (AAVE)] and race (White/Black) were crossed; Study 2 also included three levels of case (Ambiguous/Pro-Prosecution/Pro-Defense) to evaluate any effects of evidentiary context. In both studies, jurors who listened to the AAVE recording found the AAVE-speaking witness to be less professional and less educated than their GAE-speaking counterparts. Interestingly, jurors in Study 2 who heard the defendant use GAE were more likely to find him guilty and found him less credible when the case favored the prosecution, hinting that ingroup biases such as the black sheep effect may also play a role in perceptions of dialect. Secondary analyses found that AAVE predicted more negative overall evaluations of the speaker, and these negative evaluations were associated with an increase in guilty verdicts. Together, these findings suggest that dialect plays an under-investigated role in the courtroom, and that bias against AAVE negatively impacts juror appraisals of its speakers and can potentially influence juror decision making.     

Voter overrepresentation,vote misreporting,and turnout bias in postelection surveys

Figures from postelection surveys often grossly overestimate election turnout. Two distinct phenomena are responsible for this gap: overrepresentation of actual voters and vote misreporting by actual nonvoters among survey respondents. Previous accounts of turnout bias are inconclusive in that they either focus on a single component, or fail to separate between the two. In this paper, we formally decompose turnout bias in election surveys into its constituent parts, assess their empirical prevalence and heterogeneity using an extensive collection of 49 vote validation studies from six countries, and employ Bayesian meta regression techniques to account for cross-study differences. Our results indicate that both election and survey characteristics such as actual voter turnout and survey response rates differentially affect the components of turnout bias. We conclude with a discussion of the threats and potentials of our findings for survey-based comparative electoral research.     

OBA2: An Onion approach to Binary code Authorship Attribution

A critical aspect of malware forensics is authorship analysis. The successful outcome of such analysis is usually determined by the reverse engineer's skills and by the volume and complexity of the code under analysis. To assist reverse engineers in such a tedious and error-prone task, it is desirable to develop reliable and automated tools for supporting the practice of malware authorship attribution. In a recent work, machine learning was used to rank and select syntax-based features such as n-grams and flow graphs. The experimental results showed that the top ranked features were unique for each author, which was regarded as an evidence that those features capture the author's programming styles. In this paper, however, we show that the uniqueness of features does not necessarily correspond to authorship. Specifically, our analysis demonstrates that many “unique” features selected using this method are clearly unrelated to the authors' programming styles, for example, unique IDs or random but unique function names generated by the compiler; furthermore, the overall accuracy is generally unsatisfactory. Motivated by this discovery, we propose a layered Onion Approach for Binary Authorship Attribution called OBA2. The novelty of our approach lies in the three complementary layers: preprocessing, syntax-based attribution, and semantic-based attribution. Experiments show that our method produces results that not only are more accurate but have a meaningful connection to the authors' styles.     

“He's guilty!”: Investigator Bias in Judgments of Truth and Deception

Detecting deception is an inherently difficult task, but one that plays a critical role for law enforcement investigators in the interrogation room. In general, research has failed to indicate that performance in this domain is improved by training or prior experience. A signal detection framework is applied to the paradigm to better conceptualize the influence of these two factors. We found that although neither factor influenced discrimination accuracy, there was an effect on response bias such that training and prior experience appeared to increase the likelihood of responding deceit as opposed to truth. This investigator bias was observed both in a review of the literature and in this study of North American law enforcement investigators who took part in a forensically based deception-detection task. Possible theoretical mechanisms and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

洞开女性生命存在的悲剧真相--山东女性小说主题意向论析

20世纪90年代山东女性小说的主题意向集中于三个层面:一是描写刻画女性置身于物化时代的艰难处境;二是揭示反映女性沉浮于都市流行的浮华爱情中所遭受的残忍掠夺与伤害;三是书写传达女性解构颠覆男权中心文化秩序的决绝反抗。这些作品由此洞开了女性生命存在的悲剧真相,显示出文化反抗的积极意义,但同时也存在着明显的偏颇与不足。     

论下岗职工归因中的自我服务倾向

人们在归因过程中存在着强烈的自我服务倾向。即人们在对自己的行为尤其是不好的行为进行归因时 ,倾向于将之归于外因 ;而人们在对别人的不良行为进行归因时 ,倾向于将之归为内因。反之亦然 ,作为一个特殊的群体 ,下岗职工归因时同样存在着明显的“自我服务倾向”。其产生的原因在于经济体制改革中职工地位的巨大变化所引起的强烈的心理失衡。对这一倾向进行认真研究 ,能够有针对性地对职工进行积极的引导 ,有效地促进下岗职工再就业的顺利进行。     

"刑法规范之模糊性"探源

刑事立法和刑法学研究存在盲目推崇刑法规范的明确性而忽视甚至完全摒弃刑法规范的模糊性的现象,刑法规范的模糊性的存在有其根源与理由,因而模糊性与明确性同为刑法规范的两个基本属性,两者相辅相成.     

Blind Spots: The Effects of Information and Stakes on Fairness Bias and Dispersion

Mounting empirical research provides evidence of fairness bias and its economic and social effects, where fairness bias refers here to a deviation of claims from unbiased justice due to a personal stake. A far less appreciated issue is dispersion of fairness views and claims, which is also important for its effects on disagreements, empirical analysis, and philosophical theories. This study undertakes a systematic analysis of the effects on fairness bias and dispersion of two variables: stakes and information. Most philosophical and social science analyses related to justice and bias associate heightened bias with increased information and, conversely, impartiality with the elimination of certain information. Less attention has been paid to the opposing impact of information, which is to supply the facts needed to achieve justice more reliably. An important open question is whether, on balance, increased information helps agents to achieve fairer outcomes or whether biased use of such information contributes to less fair outcomes. This study focuses on a set of previously reported experiments that share certain features and subjects them to a new analysis. The results of this analysis suggest that, although information is often used in a self-serving way, increased information can, under certain conditions, contribute to fairness claims becoming less biased and less dispersed, both for stakeholders as well as impartial spectators.     

Does Hostile Attributional Bias for Relational Provocations Mediate the Short-Term Association between Relational Victimization and Aggression in Preadolescence?

This short-term longitudinal study examined the direct association between relational victimization and relational aggression over a five-month period, and proposed that hostile attributional bias for relational provocations mediated this association. Participants were 140 preadolescents (aged 9 to 11 years) in grades four and five. Relational victimization and relational aggression were assessed from self-reports. Hostile intent attributions were measured from preadolescent's responses to hypothetical provocation situations that depicted ambiguous relational aggression among peers. Concurrent and longitudinal findings revealed that more relationally victimized preadolescents were also more relationally aggressive toward their peers. Hostile attributions partially mediated the concurrent association between relational victimization and relational aggression at T1 only. Boys reported significantly higher levels of physical victimization, physical aggression, and relational aggression than girls. Implications for prevention programs are discussed. Rachel Yeung is a Doctoral student in Psychology at University of Victoria, Canada. She received her MSc in Life-Span Developmental Psychology at University of Victoria. Her research interests include risk and protective factors among children and adolescents who are victimized by their peers and program intervention. Dr. Bonnie Leadbeater, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Psychology who joined the University of Victoria in 1997 after 9 years as Faculty at Yale University. She is Director of the Centre for Youth and Society's research and programs that promote youth health and resilience through community-university research partnerships. She received her PhD in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University, New York. Her research interests include depression in adolescence, resilience among high-risk youth, and the prevention of peer victimization.     

WTO知识产权协议侵权归责原则

中国知识产权保护从零水平向世界水平跃进 ,使中国有关司法近年始终保持攀高的趋势 ,法学界也为适应这种趋势提供了理论依据。本文作者从分析WTO知识产权协议侵权归责入手 ,对TRIPS协议主张“无过错责任”总原则提出质疑 ,对中国司法总体适用“过错推定”原则提出疑问。最后 ,对TRIPS协议侵权归责以“场合”划分而不以“权属”之诉划分的实践意义及对如何正确理解TRIPS协议侵权归责作出了探讨。