The legal system relies heavily on the contribution of forensic psychologists. These psychologists give opinions on a defendant’s ability to stand trial, their legal sanity at the time of the crime, their future dangerousness, and their competency to be executed. However, we know little about what extrinsic factors bias these experts. I assessed the influence of gruesome photographs on forensic psychologists’ evaluations of competency and legal sanity. Previous research has demonstrated that these photographs influence lay judgments of guilt. I predicted that gruesome color photographs (versus the same photographs in black-and-white or a textual description of the photographs) would influence forensic psychologists to judge the defendant competent and sane (decisions that might ultimately lead to punishment). I also predicted that this effect would be greater for sanity judgments than for competency judgments. I asked laypeople to make the same decisions in order to compare expert and lay judgments. I predicted that impact of photograph type seen in experts would be greater in the lay sample. No differences in judgments of competence, sanity, or mental illness emerged as a function of the type of visual information, for either expert or lay participants. Experts relied on competency evidence to make competency judgments and insanity evidence to make insanity judgments. In contrast, lay people relied on various types of evidence to make their ultimate judgments. This research suggests that people making competency and sanity judgments might not be biased by gruesome photographs.

Why do social perceivers use race to infer a target's propensity for criminal behavior and likelihood of re-offense? Life history theory proposes that the harshness and unpredictability of one's environment shapes individuals' behavior, with harsh and unpredictable ("desperate") ecologies inducing "fast" life history strategies (characterized by present-focused behaviors), and resource-sufficient and stable ("hopeful") ecologies inducing "slow" life history strategies (characterized by future-focused behaviors). Social perceivers have an implicit understanding of the ways in which ecology shapes behavior, and use cues to ecology to infer a target's likely life history strategy. Additionally, because race is confounded with ecology in the United States, American perceivers use race as a heuristic cue to ecology, stereotyping Black individuals as possessing faster life history strategies than White individuals. In the current project, I proposed that many race stereotypes about propensity for criminality and recidivism actually reflect inferences of life history strategy, and thus track beliefs about the behavioral effects of ecology, rather than race. In a series of three studies, I explored the relationship between ecology, race, and perceptions of criminal behavior. Participants in each experiment were recruited through an online marketplace. Findings indicated that (1) stereotypes regarding likelihood to engage in specific crimes were largely driven by beliefs about the presumed ecology of the offender, rather than the offender's race, such that Black and White targets from desperate (and hopeful) ecologies were stereotyped as similarly likely (or unlikely) to commit a variety of crimes; (2) lay beliefs about recidivism predictors likewise reflected inferences of life history strategy, and thus also tracked ecology rather than race; (3) when evaluating whether to release a specific offender on parole, participants placed greater importance on ecology information as compared to race information in a point allocation task, and prioritized ecology information over race information in a ranking task. Taken together, these findings suggest that beliefs about criminality and recidivism may not be driven by race, per se, but instead reflect inferences of how one's ecology shapes behavior. Implications of these findings for understanding and reducing racial bias in the criminal justice system are discussed.

Recommendations made by expert groups are pervasive throughout various life domains. Yet not all recommendations--or expert groups--are equally persuasive. This research aims to identify factors that influence the persuasiveness of recommendations. More specifically, this study examined the effects of decisional cohesion (the amount of agreement among the experts in support of the recommendation), framing (whether the message is framed as a loss or gain), and the domain of the recommendation (health vs. financial) on the persuasiveness of the recommendation. The participants consisted of 1,981 undergraduates from Arizona State University. The participants read a vignette including information about the expert group making a recommendation--which varied the amount of expert agreement for the recommendation--and the recommendation, which was framed as either a gain or loss. Participants then responded to questions about the persuasiveness of the recommendation. In this study, there was a linear main effect of decisional cohesion such that the greater the decisional cohesion of the expert group the more persuasive their recommendation. In addition, there was a main effect of domain such that the health recommendation was more persuasive than the financial recommendation. Contrary to predictions, there was no observed interaction between the amount of decisional cohesion and the framing of the recommendation nor was there a main effect of framing. Further analyses show support for a mediation effect indicating that high levels of decisional cohesion increased the perceived entitativity of the expert group--the degree to which the group was perceived as a unified, cohesive group¬--which increased the recommendation's persuasiveness. An implication of this research is that policy makers could increase the persuasiveness of their recommendations by promoting recommendations that are unanimously supported by their experts or at least show higher levels of decisional cohesion.

As the world's resources face increasing pressure from a growing population, it is critical that psychologists understand the motivational processes that lead to cooperation or defection in the context of social dilemmas. Research has uncovered several key strategies for encouraging maintenance of these resources, however, one area that remains understudied is the effect various emotions may have on cooperation. Furthermore, it is important to consider the specific type of desired behavior: reduction of consumption of a shared resource, or increased contribution to a shared resource. The current study takes a step in this direction, examining the effects of two self-conscious emotions, guilt and pride, on behavior in two different kinds of social dilemmas. Guilt, a prosocial emotion that has been described as a "behavioral interrupt mechanism," is predicted to increase cooperation in both a social trap game and a public goods dilemma game. However, its effects should be strongest in the social trap game, in which the desired behavior is reduced consumption. Pride, an emotion that is conceptually related to the constructs of status and power, is predicted to motivate action in both domains, by increasing both consumption in the social trap game and contribution in the public goods dilemma game. Results partially support these predictions: Whereas guilt and pride both had the predicted effects on consumption in the social trap game, neither had a significant effect on contribution in the public goods dilemma game. Individual differences are examined, as are the results of a Game Feedback Sheet, which yielded insight as to how participants understood the rules of the games, and why they chose the strategies they did. Results support the idea that emotions represent a potentially fruitful avenue of research in social dilemma cooperation, and possible future directions for this research are discussed.