Further action toward valid science in Law and Human Behavior: Requiring open data, analytic code, and research materials.

In 2019, the inaugural editorial of Law and Human Behavior promised a measured approach to increasing transparency, openness, and replicability practices in the journal. Now, 3 years later, and on the brink of the present authors' last year as the editorial team, it seems only fitting that they take further action to bolster the validity of science published in the journal by requiring that authors openly report data, analytic code, and research materials. The purpose of this editorial is to briefly outline Law and Human Behavior's new requirements. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

False confessions predict a delay between release from incarceration and official exoneration.

OBJECTIVES: Little empirical research has examined postconviction processes associated with the unique legal events of release from incarceration and official exoneration. Across various models, we tested the influence of risk factors associated with wrongful convictions (false confessions, faulty or misleading forensic evidence, inadequate legal defense, mistaken eyewitness identifications, official misconduct, and perjury) and relevant alternative factors (e.g., presence of DNA, false guilty pleas, and race) on the exoneration process, with a particular focus on the role of false confessions. HYPOTHESES: We expected that all risk factors would be meaningfully associated with the duration between wrongful conviction and release but that false confessions would be associated with longer delays between release and exoneration and would remain a meaningful predictor of the delay even when accounting for alternative factors. METHOD: Using data from documented exonerations of murder, attempted murder, and accessory to murder in the National Registry of Exonerations (N = 1,074), we examined the association of risk factors and alternative predictors with the time between exonerees' wrongful conviction and release from incarceration and the time between release from incarceration and official exoneration. RESULTS: Overall, five of the six risk factors predicted the time between wrongful conviction and release from incarceration, but of the risk factors, only false confessions predicted the time between release and exoneration (d = 0.28; 95% CI [0.13, 0.43]), even when we controlled for relevant alternative factors (d = 0.29; 95% CI [0.14, 0.43]). CONCLUSIONS: Exonerations that involve false confessions are associated with delays in the critical window between innocent people's release and official exoneration-a time during which these innocent people are precluded from accessing reintegration aids and may struggle to find housing and employment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The Deleterious Effect of Victimization on Just World Beliefs.

Being a victim of a violent crime is a traumatic experience. Sexual victimization, in particular, may be powerful enough to change presumably stable worldviews like just world beliefs. Across two large samples, we examined the influence of sexual victimization on just world beliefs. Results of Study 1 (N = 727) indicated that victims of sexual aggression had significantly lower levels of just world beliefs compared to nonvictims. Other researchers have claimed that sexual aggression is a uniquely intense traumatic event. Therefore, in a second study, we examined (a) whether just world belief endorsement was associated with the frequency of victimization, and (b) whether sexual aggression was unique in its effect on just world belief endorsement compared to other crimes such as physical assault. Results of Study 2 (N = 2,011) indicated that multiple incidents of victimization did not meaningfully impact just world beliefs compared to a single instance and just world belief endorsement was not significantly different across victims of sexual aggression, robbery, physical assault, or arson. An exploratory analysis, however, indicated there was a significant difference in victims' behavior such that victims of sexual aggression were the least likely to have reported the crime. We end with a discussion of how the present research can advance our understanding of just world belief ideology and discuss the practical implications for professionals working with and studying victims of violent crimes.

Biasability and reliability of expert forensic document examiners.

The performance of experts can be characterized in terms of biasability and reliability of their judgments. The current research is the first to explore the judgments of practicing forensic document experts, professionals who examine and compare disputed handwritten evidence to handwriting exemplars of individuals involved in criminal or civil litigation. Forensic handwriting experts determine if questioned and known handwritten items are of common authorship or written by different individuals, and present their findings in legal proceedings. The expert participants in our study (N=25) were not aware that they were part of a research study. Thirteen participants were led to believe that they were working on a case commissioned from the prosecution and the other twelve that it was for the defense. We did not find evidence in this study that this information biased their judgments, which may make sense since document examiners (in contrast to many other forensic domains) do not primarily work within an organizational forensic laboratory culture. The lack of bias in our findings may have been also due to the stimuli we used or/and the great variability in the judgments within each group, reflecting a lack of consistency in conclusions among examiners. A detailed discussion of our findings is presented along with the limitations that may have affected our results.

Bounded Blame: The Effects of Victim-Perpetrator Relationship and Victimization History on Judgments of Sexual Violence.

Individuals often tend to irrationally blame victims for their plight. This research incorporated a bounded rationality framework to examine first-person perspectives (rather than third-person) of both victims' and nonvictims' perceptions and judgments of acquaintance and stranger sexual violence. Upon completing individual difference measures, including a just-world belief assessment, participants (N = 296) were randomly assigned to read a scenario in which the vignette victim was either acquainted with or had no prior relationship with the perpetrator. Then, taking the perspective of the vignette victim, participants offered four judgments: the likelihood of reporting the crime, self-blame, perceived control, and sympathy expected from others. Results showed that instances of acquaintance sexual violence were judged more negatively than instances of stranger sexual violence. Moreover, participants who had previously experienced sexual violence reported more negative judgments than nonvictims (except for sympathy expected from others). An exploratory path analysis indicated that as nonvictims', but not victims', just-world beliefs became stronger, they indicated a higher willingness to report the crime, perceived more control over the situation, and expected more sympathy from others. We end with a discussion of how the present research can advance our understanding of sexual violence by using a bounded rationality framework and discuss the practical implications that the observed effects have for professionals in the legal system, outside observers, and victims themselves.

Cumulative Disadvantage: A Psychological Framework for Understanding How Innocence Can Lead to Confession, Wrongful Conviction, and Beyond.

False confessions are a contributing factor in almost 30% of DNA exonerations in the United States. Similar problems have been documented all over the world. We present a novel framework to highlight the processes through which innocent people, once misidentified as suspects, experience cumulative disadvantages that culminate in pernicious consequences. The cumulative-disadvantage framework details how the innocent suspect's naivete and the interrogator's presumption of guilt trigger a process that can lead to false confession, the aftereffects of which spread to corrupt evidence gathering, bias forensic analysis, and virtually ensure wrongful convictions at trial or through pressured false guilty pleas. The framework integrates nascent research underscoring the enduring effects of the accumulated disadvantages postconviction and even after exoneration. We synthesize findings from psychological science, corroborating naturalistic evidence, and relevant legal precedents to explain how an innocent suspect's disadvantages can accumulate through the actions of law enforcement, forensic examiners, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, juries, and appeals courts. We conclude with prescribed research directions that can lead to empirically driven reforms to address the gestalt of the multistage process.

Taking the next steps: Promoting open science and expanding diversity in Law and Human Behavior.

In this editorial, the authors note that steady submission rate and a rejection rate that hovers at 80%, indicates the journal is flourishing and provides them with the fortunate opportunity to make an excellent journal even better. To that end, they describe three initiatives they are working on and explain the changes readers can expect as they begin to implement them in the journal. Specifically, these initiatives include: (1) promoting transparency, openness, and reproducibility in published research; (2) improving author-reviewer fit; and (3) expanding the diversity of journal content and decision makers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Godless by association: Deficits in trust mediate antiatheist stigma-by-association.

In the United States, atheists elicit high levels of sociopolitical rejection that is primarily motivated by a lack of trust. Across three studies, we use evaluative conditioning (EC) as a theoretical framework to evaluate whether these deficits extended to candidates who are not atheists themselves but merely perceived to be associated with atheism. Study 1 found that implicit trust, explicit trust, and voting intentions toward target candidates were all negatively impacted by an EC procedure that paired a candidate's face with words related to atheism. Study 2 found that trust and political support for a Christian candidate was eroded when he expressed proatheist public policy position. In both experiments, trust mediated the effects of atheist associations on voting intentions for religiously affiliated participants. Study 3 found the same moderated-mediation pattern. Religiously affiliated participants who perceived Barack Obama as being more favorable toward atheists were less likely to vote for him, in large part due to a lack of trust. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Police tactics and guilt status uniquely influence suspects' physiologic reactivity and resistance to confess.

Research has identified numerous factors that influence suspects during police interrogations. However, the dynamics between individuals' physiologic reactivity and their confession decision making is in its infancy. This research sought to advance the interrogation literature by examining the relationships among different interrogation tactics, suspects' resistance to confess, and their physiologic reactivity during a mock interrogation. After manipulating innocence and guilt, participants (N = 154) were accused and interrogated using either a minimization or false evidence tactic. Participants' physiologic reactivity was operationalized using their systolic blood pressure, and confession resistance was quantified as the number of times participants refused to confess. Results demonstrated that participants exhibited more physiologic reactivity after being confronted with false evidence ploys than minimization. Furthermore, innocent participants resisted confessing more than guilty participants, but innocents confronted with false evidence resisted confessing to a greater extent than innocents confronted with minimization. Moreover, a moderated-mediation analysis indicated that although innocents resisted confessing more when confronted with false evidence than those confronted with minimization, these innocents sustained a significantly higher level of physiologic reactivity. The results of the conditional indirect relationship suggest that innocents who are confronted with false evidence may resist the most but at a cost-their greater resistance may exhaust them and undermine subsequent decision making. These results offer support for reforms aimed at reducing the length of interrogations and the use of interrogation tactics that unnecessarily increase false confession rates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The accumulation of stereotype-based self-fulfilling prophecies.

A recurring theme in the psychological literature is that the self-fulfilling effect of stereotypes can accumulate across perceivers. This article provides the first empirical support for this long-standing hypothesis. In three experiments (Ns = 123-241), targets more strongly confirmed a stereotype as the number of perceivers who held stereotypic expectations about them increased. A fourth experiment (N = 121) showed that new perceivers judged targets according to the stereotypic behaviors they had previously been channeled to adopt, an effect that even occurred among perceivers who were privy to the fact that targets' behavior had been shaped by the actions of others. The authors discuss ways in which these effects may contribute to group inequalities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Knowingly but naively: The overpowering influence of innocence on interrogation rights decision-making.

Most suspects waive the guaranteed protections that interrogation rights afford them against police intimidation. One factor thought to motivate suspects' inclination to waive their rights stems from the acquiescence bias whereby suspects mindlessly comply with interrogators' requests. However, research bearing on the phenomenology of innocence has demonstrated the power of innocents' mindset, which could motivate some innocent suspects to waive their rights knowingly (instead of mindlessly complying). To test these ideas, participants (N = 178) were (a) rightfully (guilty) or wrongfully (innocent) accused of wrongdoing during an experimental session, (b) administered 1 of 2 forms that by signing either waived or invoked their rights to a student advocate, and (c) given questions to assess their degree of knowing during the decision-making process (i.e., extent to which individuals were cognizant of their decisions). Results demonstrated that unknowing innocent and guilty individuals tended to passively comply, engaging in a pre-interrogation acquiescence bias by signing waive and invoke forms at similar rates. But, as participants became more cognizant of their decisions, they acquiesced at lower rates and their change from acquiescence differed depending on their status. As innocents became more cognizant, they signed the waiver form at higher rates than the invoke form, thereby demonstrating that innocence can motivate some suspects to knowingly forgo their rights. Conversely, as guilty individuals became more cognizant, they signed the invoke form at higher rates than the waiver form. These findings have implications for reforming pre-interrogation protocols, protecting suspects' civil liberties, and preventing innocents from offering false self-incriminating evidence. (PsycINFO Database Record

Overcoming Innocents' Naiveté: Pre-interrogation Decision-making Among Innocent Suspects.

Suspects, especially innocent ones, are highly susceptible to waiving their interrogation rights. This research tested the ability of two strategies to overcome innocent suspects' willingness to waive their rights. One strategy was based on the social influence of scarcity (i.e., not constraining the pre-interrogation time limit). The other strategy focused on disrupting individuals' cognitive fluency during the decision-making process (i.e., violating their induced expectation of offering a waiver). Disrupting innocent individuals' cognitive fluency increased their willingness to invoke their rights and, notably, was not qualified by interactions with any other factors. However, scarcity did not influence individuals' pre-interrogation decision-making. Results also further established the association between innocent individuals' naïve mindset and their willingness to waive their rights - specifically, innocents' willingness to waive their rights increased with the strength of their just world beliefs. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed. The importance and benefit of reforming pre-interrogation protocols using fair and feasible strategies that would disrupt suspects' cognitive fluency are emphasized. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The world is not fair: an examination of innocent and guilty suspects' waiver decisions.

Suspects' decisions to waive or invoke their interrogation rights can have a considerable impact on their eventual legal fate. Although innocent and guilty suspects show differences in waiver rates, research has yet to examine whether innocent and guilty individuals' waiver decisions are differentially influenced by dispositional and situational factors. The current research examined the relationship among a dispositional factor (just world beliefs), a situational factor (social proof pressures-i.e., influencing others to believe that certain behaviors are normative) and innocent and guilty individuals' waiver decisions. Social proof pressures influenced the preinterrogation decisions of guilty individuals holding strong just world beliefs but not guilty individuals holding weak just world beliefs. However, social proof pressures influenced the preinterrogation decisions of innocent individuals holding weak just world beliefs but not innocent individuals holding strong just world beliefs. Results also indicated that strong just world beliefs are associated with attenuated stress responses to an accusation among innocent individuals but exacerbated stress responses among guilty individuals, thereby helping to explain why guilty and innocent individuals are differentially influenced by situational and dispositional factors. The theoretical and applied implications of these effects are discussed with an emphasis on the consequences of suspects' mindset during the preinterrogation decision-making process.

The Role Of The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy In Young Adolescents' Responsiveness To A Substance Use Prevention Program.

This research examined whether naturally-occurring self-fulfilling prophecies influenced adolescents' responsiveness to a substance use prevention program. The authors addressed this issue with a unique methodological approach that was designed to enhance the internal validity of research on naturally-occurring self-fulfilling prophecies by experimentally controlling for prediction without influence. Participants were 321 families who were assigned to an adolescent substance use prevention program that either did or did not systematically involve parents. Results showed that parents' perceptions about the value of involving parents in adolescent substance use prevention predicted adolescents' alcohol use more strongly among families assigned to the prevention program that systematically involved parents than to the one that did not. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

"Go ahead and sign": an experimental examination of Miranda waivers and comprehension.

This research examined whether the protections afforded by Miranda are compromised by two situational factors that may be present during the Miranda administration process. The factors examined were the police tactic of trivializing the importance of a waiver and the stress that accompanies an accusation of serious misconduct. All participants (N = 89) were accused of misconduct on an experimental task and were led to believe that they would have to discuss the incident with the professor in charge of the experiment. In addition, all participants were asked to sign a waiver of their right to have a student advocate present during that meeting, after which their comprehension of the waiver was assessed. To manipulate the police tactic of trivializing a waiver, participants were told that the waiver had important or trivial implications for their future outcomes. To manipulate stress, participants were told that their misconduct was either a serious or minor violation of the experiment. Results indicated that participants were more likely to sign the waiver and had worse comprehension of its content when it was described as trivial versus important. Participants' comprehension of the waiver was also worse when their misconduct was described as a serious versus a minor violation of the experiment. These findings have implications for policy regarding the standardization of Miranda administration protocols as well as for future research aimed at understanding the influence of situational factors on Miranda waivers and comprehension.

How factors present during the immediate interrogation situation produce short-sighted confession decisions.

Suspects have a preexisting vulnerability to make short-sighted confession decisions, giving disproportionate weight to proximal, rather than distal, consequences. The findings of the current research provided evidence that this preexisting vulnerability is exacerbated by factors that are associated with the immediate interrogation situation. In Experiment 1 (N = 118), a lengthy interview exacerbated participants' tendency to temporally discount a distal consequence when deciding whether or not to admit to criminal and unethical behaviors. This effect was especially pronounced among less serious behaviors. In Experiment 2 (N = 177), participants' tendency to temporally discount a distal consequence when making admission decisions was exacerbated by the expectation of a lengthy interview; an effect that became stronger the longer the interview continued. These findings suggest that conditions of the immediate interrogation situation may capitalize on an already-present vulnerability among suspects to make short-sighted confession decisions, thereby increasing the chances that even innocent suspects might confess.

You have the right to understand: the deleterious effect of stress on suspects' ability to comprehend Miranda.

Miranda v. Arizona (384 U.S. 436, 1966) required that suspects be explicitly warned of the right to avoid self-incrimination and the right to legal representation. This research was designed to examine whether stress, induced via an accusation of wrong-doing, undermined or enhanced suspects' ability to comprehend their Miranda rights. Participants were randomly assigned to either be accused (n = 15) or not accused (n = 15) of having cheated on an experimental task in a two-cell between-subjects experimental design. Results supported the hypothesis that stress undermines suspects' ability to comprehend their Miranda rights. Participants who were accused of cheating exhibited significantly lower levels of Miranda comprehension than participants who were not accused of cheating. The theoretical processes responsible for these effects and the implications of the findings for police interrogation are discussed.

Temporal discounting: the differential effect of proximal and distal consequences on confession decisions.

Drawing on the psychological principle that proximal consequences influence behavior more strongly than distal consequences, the authors tested the hypothesis that criminal suspects exhibit a short-sightedness during police interrogation that increases their risk for confession. Consistent with this hypothesis, Experiment 1 showed that participants (N = 81) altered how frequently they admitted to criminal and unethical behaviors during an interview to avoid a proximal consequence even though doing so increased their risk of incurring a distal consequence. Experiment 2 (N = 143) yielded the same pattern, but with a procedure that reversed the order of the proximal and distal consequences, thereby ruling out the possibility that it was the unique characteristics of the consequences rather than their proximity that influenced the admission rate. The authors discuss the supported psychological process as a potential explanation for several well-established findings reported in the literature on confessions.

Self-verification as a mediator of mothers' self-fulfilling effects on adolescents' educational attainment.

This research examined whether self-verification acts as a general mediational process of self-fulfilling prophecies. The authors tested this hypothesis by examining whether self-verification processes mediated self-fulfilling prophecy effects within a different context and with a different belief and a different outcome than has been used in prior research. Results of longitudinal data obtained from mothers and their adolescents (N=332) indicated that mothers' beliefs about their adolescents' educational outcomes had a significant indirect effect on adolescents' academic attainment through adolescents' educational aspirations. This effect, observed over a 6-year span, provided evidence that mothers' self-fulfilling effects occurred, in part, because mothers' false beliefs influenced their adolescents' own educational aspirations, which adolescents then self-verified through their educational attainment. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed.

The mediation of mothers' self-fulfilling effects on their children's alcohol use: self-verification, informational conformity, and modeling processes.

This research examined whether self-fulfilling prophecy effects are mediated by self-verification, informational conformity, and modeling processes. The authors examined these mediational processes across multiple time frames with longitudinal data obtained from two samples of mother-child dyads (N-sub-1 = 486; N-sub-2 = 287), with children's alcohol use as the outcome variable. The results provided consistent support for the mediational process of self-verification. In both samples and across several years of adolescence, there was a significant indirect effect of mothers' beliefs on children's alcohol use through children's self-assessed likelihood of drinking alcohol in the future. Comparatively less support was found for informational conformity and modeling processes as mediators of mothers' self-fulfilling effects. The potential for self-fulfilling prophecies to produce long-lasting changes in targets' behavior via self-verification processes are discussed.