Public support for sentencing reform: A policy-capturing experiment.

Vardsveen, Trace C.; Wiener, Richard L.

doi:10.1037/xap0000339

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…We dropped those who completed the survey too quickly because they did not have enough time to concentrate on the tasks and supply meaningful answers and we dropped those who took too long because the opportunity for distractions or assistance from others in completing the task was too likely. Dropping participants who spend too little or too much time completing online experiments is common practice (Berry & Wiener, 2020; Vardsveen & Wiener, in press; Wiener & Vardsveen, 2018). We dropped the unusable data before we analyzed any other data for Phase 1 or Phase 2 based upon the decision to use a two standard deviation cutoff.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The public’s judgment of sex trafficked women: Blaming the victim?

Wiener¹,

Berry²,

Wertheimer³

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

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A victim-centered approach to fighting sex trafficking can result in apprehension and prosecution of traffickers and offer needed services to survivors. However, law enforcement officers frequently arrest sextrafficking survivors for prostitution in accordance with state law. This study examined the psychology of public reactions and judgments of sex-trafficking survivors demonstrating the importance of situational factors, cognitive stereotypes, and moral emotions. Using Stereotype Content Modeling to measure the stereotypes that 762 community members held about prostitutes, we found shared stereotypes that were low in competence (i.e., capable and skilled) and warmth (i.e., good-natured and friendly). These participants later read modified case facts from United States v. Bell (United States v. Bell, 761 F.3d (8th Cir. 2014)) that varied survivor history of prostitution, vulnerability, and prostitution as a subsequent livelihood. Participants who stereotyped prostitutes as low in warmth and competence were the ones most certain police should arrest the survivor. Moral emotion analyses further showed that a survivor with no prior prostitution history and who came from a nonvulnerable background invoked disgust and contempt, which predicted a higher certainty of the arrest. Moral emotions fully mediated the relationship between the interacting case facts and arrest certainty for the trafficking survivor. Future directions and policy implications are discussed. Public Significance StatementParticipants who stereotyped prostitutes as low in warmth and competence were more certain police should arrest the survivor of sex trafficking for violating prostitution laws as were those who read about a survivor with no prior prostitution history and who came from a nonvulnerable background, in part, as a result of the disgust and contempt which people felt toward the survivor. The results suggest that efforts to educate the public about victim-centered approaches to sex trafficking could lead to healthier outcomes for the survivors as well as more effective prosecution of traffickers.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The public’s judgment of sex trafficked women: Blaming the victim?

Wiener¹,

Berry²,

Wertheimer³

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

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“…This is not an unusual finding as prior research has displayed this effect on criminal justice policies involving theories of punishment. Evaluators in punishment studies have stated a preference for rehabilitative or deterrent theories of punishment; however, when presented with vignette scenarios which manipulate different cues about the crime, participant punishment decisions reflect a sensitivity to factors associated with retribution (Carlsmith, 2006, 2008; Vardsveen & Wiener, 2021). This difference between evaluators’ stated values and the values they are actually responsive to when given the opportunity to assess a policy further elucidates the central finding that voters may not engage in thoughtful or even surface level evaluation of relevant policy cues.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We dropped those who completed the survey too quickly because they did not have enough time to concentrate on the tasks and supply meaningful answers and we dropped those who took too long because the opportunity for distractions or assistance from others in completing the task was too likely. We chose our time cutoffs based on prior research which has dropped participants who spend too little or too much time completing online experiments (Berry & Wiener, 2020; Holloway & Wiener, 2021; Vardsveen & Wiener, 2021; Wiener et al, in press; Wiener & Vardsveen, 2018).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Regarding participants who we dropped from the study due to the time cutoffs, it is not uncommon for researchers to discard participants from MTurk samples who start a study but do not provide usable data (see Berry & Wiener, 2020;Holloway & Wiener, 2021;Vardsveen & Wiener, 2021;Wiener & Vardsveen, 2018). Despite this limitation, research suggests that MTurk remains a valuable source of diverse and representative community samples, which provide insight into social, legal, and political issues of interest to social psychology without resorting to the highly restricted responses of undergraduate research participants (Berinsky et al, 2012;Buhrmester et al, 2011Buhrmester et al, , 2018Coppock, 2019;Coppock et al, 2018;Mullinix et al, 2015).…”

Section: Limitations and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Incorporating emotion into cue-based political judgment modeling.

Holloway¹,

Wiener²

2023

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law

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Although the influence of partisanship on American voter behavior is well documented, there are political decisions when party elites are either silent or not in agreement where parties might hold less sway. The present research theorized that in such cases, voters' emotional projections about the policy rather than a review of available information about the law predict their decisions. This study took a policy capturing approach to modeling political judgment by using participant responses to a proposed policy to create a series of regression models in which partisanship, forecasted emotions, and utilization of policy-relevant cues predicted support for the First Step Act, a bipartisan policy which did not receive united support from either political party. Results showed that affective forecasts regarding the Act were the most robust predictors of voter support. Further, voters were inconsistent in identifying which policy relevant cue they were most responsive to when deciding to support the policy. Finally, results showed that a fast and frugal model which predicted support using the two cues most important to each voter was just as accurate as a model which predicted support using voter response to all cues. These findings suggest that when voters do not have clear direction from partisan affiliation, they turn to their emotional reaction to the policy as a source of guidance in their political judgment. Further, when voters do consider policy-relevant information, their support for the policy can be predicted based on how they respond to one or two issues.

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“…Thus, 122 (12.6%) additional participants were excluded for having reported a felony conviction on their record, and 50 (5.2%) for not being a fluent English-speaker. We followed prior published crowdsourcing studies in developing the rules to remove these participants before any further data analysis (Holloway & Wiener, 2021;Vardsveen & Wiener, 2021;Wiener et al, 2021;Wiener & Vardsveen, 2018). before them based solely on the evidence and arguments presented at trial (see materials on the OSF website).…”

Section: Procedures and Manipulationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What’s reasonable? An experimental test of the reasonable officer standard.

Vardsveen¹,

Wiener²

2022

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law

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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.

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Public support for sentencing reform: A policy-capturing experiment.

Cited by 10 publications

References 53 publications

The public’s judgment of sex trafficked women: Blaming the victim?

The public’s judgment of sex trafficked women: Blaming the victim?

Incorporating emotion into cue-based political judgment modeling.

What’s reasonable? An experimental test of the reasonable officer standard.

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