Three studies examined the relationship between need for cognition and support for punitive responses to crime. The results of Study 1 (N = 110) indicated that individuals high in need for cognition were less supportive of punitive measures than their low need for cognition counterparts. This finding was replicated in Study 2 (N = 1,807), which employed a nationally representative probability sample and included a more extensive battery of control variables. The purpose of Study 3 (N = 255) was to identify a third variable that might explain this relationship. This final study's results suggest that attributional complexity mediates the relationship between need for cognition and punitiveness. High need for cognition individuals are less supportive of punitive measures because they endorse more complex attributions for human behavior than their low need for cognition peers.
Two studies examined whether a criminal defendant's race influences Whites' sensitivity to legally relevant information. In Study 1, prosecution case strength ratings and guilt likelihood ratings were more sensitive to the strength of the defendant's alibi when he was Black than when he was White, if the experimental task was designed to elicit low processing motivation. Under high motivation, participants were equally sensitive to alibi strength, regardless of defendant race. In Study 2, the alibi strength manipulation was replaced with a manipulation of the effectiveness of the district attorney's cross-examination. As predicted, defense case strength ratings were more sensitive to the strength of the prosecutor's cross-examination with a Black defendant than with a White defendant-under low motivation. Under high motivation, sensitivity did not depend on defendant race. These results suggest that a Black defendant can elicit greater sensitivity to legally relevant information than will a White defendant.
For any nation, eliminating the risk of serious malnutrition or starvation is a mark of developmental maturity. Getting there requires a combination of factors: acute scientific and political awareness, appropriate institutions and a benign economic situation. James Vernon charts progress towards this goal in Britain, between the 'hungry forties' (1840s) and the emergence of its welfare state a century later. Britain was the first country to industrialize, moving towards dependence on imported food, truly representative government and proficient public services. Other European countries had similar trajectories but took longer as they were gripped by more rural poverty and industrialized less aggressively. The land-rich United States and Australia had low population densities and swallowed up their 'huddled masses' efficiently. Yet even the United States could not entirely avoid malnutrition; in the 1900s, niacin deficiency (pellagra) was extremely common in the South. Vernon's story begins in an era of unprecedented economic development and extraordinary pressure on society's poorest strata. The oracle of the age, Thomas Malthus, saw hunger as God-given discipline for the profligate and the reproductively overenthusiastic. His
Perspective-giving, a type of intergroup contact where anindividual shares his or her perspective with an outgroup member, has been shown to be a successful method of improving positive outgroup attitudes for subordinate group members. No research has been identified that tests the effects of vicarious perspectivegiving, which the current study defines as witnessing another ingroup member give his or her perspective to an outgroup member. The current study compares the effects of direct perspective-giving and vicarious perspective-giving on the outgroup attitudes of onesubordinate group, female college students. Female students from Bates College completed a task in which they used Facebook chat to either present their own perspective as a female student to a male student, or witness another female student giving her perspective to a male student. Participants completed a questionnaire measuring their attitudes towards male students at Bates College before and after the task. It was found that direct perspective-giving did not change participants' attitudes towards male students, and vicarious perspective-giving actually led to less favorable attitudes towards male students. This has implications for the role that perspective-giving plays on gender dynamics on college campuses and provides a platform for future research on vicarious perspective-giving.
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