In Title VII sexual harassment jurisprudence, U.S. courts use a 2-prong subjective-objective test to determine the viability of a sexual harassment claim: The complainant must show that the employer’s conduct was unwelcome and sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of employment and create an abusive working environment because of the complainant’s sex from both the complainant’s perspective (subjective prong) and a reasonable person’s perspective (objective prong). This online study used a diverse national sample (361 MTurk Community Members) to investigate whether people apply the objective prong in a uniform manner, as the law assumes, or show predictable differences. Participants read a vignette about a female interviewee’s allegations of sexual harassment following from severe, mild, or no sexual objectification by a male interviewer during a job interview. The interviewee claimed that she was either harassed or not by the interviewer during the interaction, as well as claiming to enjoy or reject sexualization. Participants made judgments about whether the interviewer’s behavior was sexually harassing from the interviewee’s and a reasonable person’s perspective. Overall, participants’ sex and enjoyment of sexualization moderated their judgments of sexual harassment when considering the situation from both points of view, demonstrating that there is no convergence on a unified standard for evaluating whether specific behavior is sexually harassing. Drawing comparisons to obscenity law, we argue that the use of data to form social fact evidence may help decision makers in hostile work environment cases to apply a more uniform understanding of what is hostile and abusive.

While research has shown magnitude of harm drives punishment decisions for crimes resulting in a prison sentence, many states impose probation rather than incarceration. A two-session experiment investigated how punishment type influences sentence length decisions. In session 1, 347 participants answered online questions about their support for punishment justifications (i.e., retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation). In session 2, the online participants read a randomly assigned scenario about a clerk who stole either a smaller or larger amount of money from his employer (magnitude of harm), which the employer was either likely or unlikely to detect (detection), and the clerk received either a term of prison or probation (type of punishment). Results revealed that magnitude of harm influenced punishment severity and sentence length judgments despite participants' self-reported support for retribution as a justification showing no influence. Punishment type also affected sentence length decisions. Furthermore, punishment severity judgments mediated the effect of the magnitude of harm on sentence length after controlling for punishment justifications but only in the probation condition, showing demand for harsher punishment was greater for probation. Thus, we concluded that the retribution motive is prevalent if offenders with a more severe crime receive probation rather than a prison sentence. Public Significance StatementThe magnitude of harm that a crime caused and the type of punishment an offender received (prison or probation) affected people's judgments about how severely or harshly to punish a defendant guilty of a theft, as well as their decisions about the length of time that the offender should serve. The results suggest that the public's demand for harsh punishments could lead to the desire for longer sentences when offenders receive alternative sentencing options like probation, which may itself lead to increased contact with the criminal justice system for offenders.

This study examined the validity of the Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (LS/CMI), as probation officers in the state of Nebraska use the tool. Study 1 evaluated the predictive validity of the LS/CMI by examining 19,344 probationer records over a 5.5-year period (January 2007-July 2013), and found that the LS/CMI total risk score demonstrated moderate predictive validity. Consistent with past findings, logistic regression showed that the total risk score predicted recidivism (return to probation) differently for nonminorities than for minorities. Furthermore, minorities scored higher than nonminorities on seven of the eight criminogenic factors. Study 2, a true randomized experiment, explored probation officer bias as an explanation for these findings, and found that training increased officers’ ratings of scores in some LS/CMI domains and decreased ratings in others. Most importantly, there was no evidence that officers demonstrated racial bias in administering the LS/CMI survey when scoring Black versus White target clients.

Two studies tested the hypothesis that men who are sexually objectified during an interview will experience a negative emotion, rate the experience as harassing, and perform badly on tasks compared to un‐objectified controls. However, observers who watch videos of objectified experiencers and predictors who read about the interaction will demonstrate stronger effects, with women showing the strongest. In Study 1, 90 undergraduates (60 men) were interviewees or watched a video of a mock job interview in a 2 (objectification: objectifying interview vs. non‐objectifying interview) × 3 (perspective: experiencer who was a man vs. observers, some men and some women) mixed model design with repeated measures on the second factor. In Study 2, 71 undergraduates read about a job interview in a 2 (objectification: objectifying vs. non‐objectifying interview) × 2 (gender: man vs. woman) between‐subjects design. Results showed that while objectified experiencers (men) showed no objectification effects, observers and predictors anticipated a reasonable person would experience more harassment than the experiencers reported, with observers’ enjoyment of sexualization moderating these forecasts. Additionally, the predictors’ forecasted negative emotions mediated the effects of objectification on judgments and task performance. These studies argue for informing Title VII's 2‐prong subjective‐objective test with social fact testimony in same‐sex harassment cases.

Under the U.S. Supreme Court's legal standard for determining civil liability in Fourth Amendment excessive force cases, jurors must judge the reasonableness of an officer's use of force from the perspective of a "reasonable" officer on the scene by considering factors like a suspect's threat and resistance levels. However, despite a growing body of empirical work on judgments of police use of force more generally, research has yet to examine whether jurors adhere to the reasonable officer standard. To help fill this gap, the current research reports on two online experiments that manipulated suspect threat and resistance levels, along with suspect race and perspective-taking in the form of expert and social fact testimony suggesting what a reasonable officer would do in similar circumstances. The results showed that suspect threat level and perspective-taking information indirectly affected officer liability decisions through officer reasonableness judgments, but that suspect resistance level did not. The results also revealed the influence of various extralegal factors outside the legal standard on reasonableness judgments and liability decisions, including attitudes toward police legitimacy and feelings toward the Black Lives Matter movement. Thus, the findings across both experiments showed that mock jurors adhered to some aspects of the reasonable officer standard but that their own sentiments still influenced their legal determinations. Finally, expert, and social fact testimony related to use of force assisted mock jurors in making officer reasonableness judgments and liability decisions when applying the reasonable officer standard. Implications of this research for psychology, law, and policy are discussed.