RUI:Dangerousness, Expert Testimony, and Juror Decision-Making a Civil Confinement Hearings

关于危险的专家心理证据是审判性暴力捕食者(SVP)的关键因素。这些审判允许在性犯罪者完成监禁后对他们进行无限期的民事监禁，依据的是犯罪者是否患有法定描述的精神疾病，以及他们是否可能对社会构成持续的危险。到目前为止，只有一项实验研究考察了心理专家证词在这一背景下对陪审员决策的影响。本研究的目的是建立在PI以前的理论和实验工作的基础上，调查心理专家证词对死刑判决中的危险性的影响，并将其扩展到性暴力捕食者的判决。之前的研究发现，模拟陪审员更多地受到科学程度较低的专家证词的影响，而标准的对抗性程序并不能消除这种偏见。其他研究表明，爱泼斯坦的认知经验自我理论(CEST)可能为这种偏见提供了一种解释，并提供了抵消陪审员偏见的手段，使陪审员能够更恰当地权衡更科学的证词。在本研究中，三种类型的心理学专家证言(即纯临床、精算和指导性专业判断)将基于真实的审判笔录创建，并将被转换为脚本录像带模拟。这一模拟将呈现给大学生模拟陪审员和更具代表性的陪审团，他们将在决策过程中进行审议。将评估陪审员和陪审团在整个审判过程中适当权衡被操纵的专家证词的能力，并将衡量CEST理论的有效性、法律上可行的CEST操纵以及先前存在的影响陪审员决策的人格特征。拟议的研究将对本科生教学、学院、未被充分代表的群体参与研究、心理和法律研究社区以及社会产生广泛影响。本科生将主要负责收集这些实验的数据，高级心理学和法律课程(心理学190)将使用这一研究计划作为主要主题。学生在大型会议上撰写的演讲很可能是学生参与的结果，对于一个主要以教学为重点的机构的学生来说，这是一个非同寻常的机会。项目调查员将通过法律评论和同行评审的科学期刊，以及在跨学科会议上的陈述，向心理学和法律界广泛传播这项研究的结果。研究结果将对心理学界产生重大影响，为现有关于危险性评估适当评估工具的辩论提供信息，并为陪审员如何处理专家证词提供理论文献。

Expert psychological testimony on dangerousness is a key element in the trials of sexually violent predators (SVPs). These trials allow for the indeterminate civil confinement of sexual offenders after they have completed their incarceration, based on whether offenders suffers from a statutorily described mental illnesses and whether they are likely to be a continuing danger to society. To date, only one experimental study has examined the impact of psychological expert testimony on juror decision-making in this context. The present studies are designed to build on the PI's previous theoretical and experimental work investigating the effects of psychological expert testimony on dangerousness in capital sentencing and extend it to sexual violent predator adjudications. Previous research found that mock jurors were more influenced by less scientific expert testimony and that standard adversary procedures did not remove this bias. Additional research suggested that Epstein's Cognitive Experiential Self theory (CEST) may offer an explanation for this bias, and means to counteract jurors' bias allowing jurors to more appropriately weigh more scientific testimony. For the present studies, three types of psychological expert testimony (i.e., pure clinical, actuarial, and guided professional judgment) will be created based on real trial transcripts, and will be transformed into a scripted videotape simulation. This simulation will be presented to both college student mock jurors and more representative juries who will deliberate in their decision-making. The ability of jurors and juries to properly weight the manipulated expert testimony throughout the trial process will be assessed, and the effectiveness of CEST theory, legally practical CEST manipulations, and pre-existing personality characteristics to affect juror decision-making will be measured The proposed research will have broad impact on undergraduate teaching, the college, underrepresented groups' involvement in research, the psychological and legal research communities, and society. Undergraduates will be primarily responsible for collecting the data for these experiments, and an advanced psychology and law class (psych 190) will use this research program as its main topic. Student authored presentations at major conferences will likely result from this student participation, an extraordinary opportunity for students at a primarily teaching-focused institution. The project investigators will disseminate the results of this study broadly to the psychological and legal community through law reviews and peer reviewed scientific journals, and presentations at interdisciplinary conferences. The studies results will have a substantial impact in the psychological community, informing the existing debate concerning appropriate evaluative tools for dangerousness evaluations and informing the theoretical literature on how jurors process expert testimony.