Lineup Identification by Children: Effects of Clothing Bias

This study examined effects of clothing cues on children's identification accuracy from lineups. Four- to 14-year-olds (n = 228) saw 12 video clips of individuals, each wearing a distinctly colored shirt. After watching each clip children were presented with a target-present or target-absent photo lineup. Three clothing conditions were included. In 2 conditions all lineup members wore the same colored shirt; in the third, biased condition, the shirt color of only one individual matched that seen in the preceding clip (the target in target-present trials and the replacement in target-absent trials). Correct identifications of the target in target-present trials were most frequent in the biased condition, whereas in target-absent trials the biased condition led to more false identifications of the target replacement. Older children were more accurate than younger children, both in choosing the target from target-present lineups and rejecting target-absent lineups. These findings suggest that a simple clothing cue such as shirt color can have a significant impact on children's lineup identification accuracy.     

Impact of Defense-Only and Opposing Eyewitness Experts on Juror Judgments

Previous research shows that expert testimony on eyewitness memory influences mock-juror judgments. We examined the extent to which opposing expert testimony mitigates the impact of defense-only expert testimony. Participants (N = 497) viewed a video-taped trial involving an eyewitness identification and individually rendered verdicts and evaluated the evidence and the experts. We manipulated the Foils (unbiased vs. biased) and Instructions (unbiased vs. biased) of the lineup and Expert Testimony (no expert vs. defense-only expert vs. opposing experts). Expert testimony did not significantly influence juror judgments, but the opposing expert testimony diminished the credibility of the defense expert in the eyes of the jurors. Results point to the need for further research on conditions that qualify the impact of expert testimony.     

Proportional representation and attitudes about politics: results from New Zealand

PR systems often are credited with producing more equitable outcomes between political parties and encouraging wider social group representation than majoritarian systems. Theory suggests that this should instill greater trust, efficacy, and faith in the political system. We assume that citizens disadvantaged by majoritarian rules (political minorities) will have a relatively greater shift toward positive attitudes about democracy following a transition from a majoritarian system to proportional representation. We employ panel data from the 1993–1996 New Zealand Election Study (NZES) to test hypotheses about the effects of electoral system change on attitudes about governmental responsiveness, trust in government, and political efficacy. We find that there is a general shift in mass opinion toward more positive attitudes on some measures of efficacy and responsiveness. Political minorities display a greater shift toward feelings of efficacy than other voters.     

关于留学生"呢"字习得偏误的教学策略

由于"呢"字所传达的语气意义必须依附于一定的语言形式时才能发挥作用,所以,教师在教学过程中不适宜在同一时间内将"呢"字的所有用法都讲给学生,应根据其不同级别,在他们掌握了语言形式的基础上将"呢"字的用法分出等级并循序渐进地加以讲解。这样,才能达到事半功倍的教学效果。     

The Relationship Between Crime Reporting and Police: Implications for the Use of Uniform Crime Reports

Empirical studies that use reported crime data to evaluate policies for reducing crime will understate the true effectiveness of these policies if crime reporting/recording behavior is also affected by the policies. For instance, when the size of the police force increases, changes in the perceived likelihood that a crime will be solved may lead a higher fraction of victimizations to be reported to the police. In this paper, three data sets are employed to measure the magnitude of this reporting bias. While each of these analyses is subject to individual criticisms, all of the approaches yield similar estimates. Reporting bias appears to be present but relatively small in magnitude: each additional officer is associated with an increase of roughly five Index crimes that previously would have gone unreported. Taking reporting bias into account makes the hiring of additional police substantially more attractive from a cost–benefit perspective but cannot explain the frequent inability of past studies to uncover a systematic negative relationship between the size of the police force and crime rates.     

从“囧”字流行看当代青年人的思维偏向

目前网络文化中"囧"字流行,文章从心理学角度分析认为,"囧"字的流行,体现了当代青年人思维模式中偏好直觉思维和形象思维的特点,并从文化心理学角度分析了这样两种思维偏向的原因。     

Two strategies for building a personal vote: Personalized representation in the UK and Denmark

Across parliamentary democracies, elected representatives constitute the link between citizens and government. MPs can connect with voters via the party label, or through personalized forms of representation, which is seen to be increasing in importance. However, scholars disagree on what explains variation in MPs' use of personalized representation strategies. In this article, we argue that politicians use different strategies to personalize the link between themselves and citizens: a constituency-oriented and a person-oriented strategy. To test our argument, we develop a new and novel dataset with behavioral measures of personalized representation. Using a content analyses of 698 British and Danish MPs’ personal websites, we demonstrate that the use of personalization strategies is conditional on the incentives MPs face in terms of electoral insecurity, candidate selection procedures, and the electoral context of the system. Our findings show that the level and type of personalized politics vary across political systems and may pose different types of challenges to party democracies.     

The house size effect and the referendum paradox in U.S. presidential elections

Barthélémy et al. (2014), extending the work of Neubauer and Zeitlin (2003), show that some U.S. presidential elections are subject to a ‘House size effect’ in that the winner of the election, i.e., the candidate who wins a majority of electoral votes, depends on the size of the House of Representatives. The conditions for the effect relate to the number of ‘Senate’ versus ‘House’ electoral votes won by each candidate, but the relationship is not straightforward due to ‘locally chaotic’ effects in the apportionment of House seats among the states as House size changes. Clearly a Presidential election that is subject to the House size effect exhibits the referendum paradox, i.e., the electoral vote winner is the popular vote loser, for some House sizes but not for others.     

Pretty faces,marginal races: Predicting election outcomes using trait assessments of British parliamentary candidates

The conventional wisdom on Western European politics leads us to believe that all the “action” lies with parties, because the unified parliamentary delegations in Western Europe draw voters' attention to parties' policies and images. Though British elections take place under a single member district plurality system, British parties, like their continental counterparts, are highly centralised and feature disciplined parliamentary delegations. Despite the strong ties between British candidates and their parties, we demonstrate that perceptions of candidates' personal attributes can be used to predict general election outcomes. Using a computer-based survey where subjects are asked to evaluate real British candidates using only rapidly determined first impressions of facial images, we successfully predict outcomes from the 2010 general election. Moreover, we find that perceptions of candidates' relative attractiveness are particularly useful for predicting outcomes in marginal constituencies.     

The mechanical and psychological effects of legal thresholds

In this paper, we estimate the effect of the legal threshold on the number of parties and decompose it into a mechanical and a psychological effect. We study the case of Morocco, whose local elections afford a rare opportunity to uncover the causal effect of the legal threshold, using a differences-in-differences approach. Our results show a large effect of the legal threshold on the number of parties. We find a large psychological effect in absolute terms: a 3% increase in the legal threshold leaves almost one effective party out of the council for purely strategic reasons. We conjecture that this large effect is due to the lack of institutionalization and programmaticness of most Moroccan parties.