Consenting to searches and the 4th Amendment: Situated social cognition within the "totality of circumstances" analysis

根据美国宪法第四修正案，人们享有免受不合理搜查的基本权利。当一个人自愿同意被搜查时，搜查并不违反第四修正案，而且人们经常同意警方的搜查请求。 人们同意警察搜查的原因，即使他们拥有非法材料，也知之甚少。 因此，法院很难系统地评估同意的非自愿性。本研究的目的是确定影响同意的非自愿性的因素，并确定可能增加强迫同意的因素。情境认知是一种心理学理论，认为事件发生的社会和物理环境会影响一个人对事件的感知和行为。 该项目将把情境社会认知应用于同意搜索情况，以确定进行同意搜索的社会和物理情况的哪些方面可能会让人们更有可能感到被迫同意。在一系列研究中，将调查情境因素的影响，如物理环境（搜索空间的大小，照明和温度），搜查者和被搜查者的相对物理位置，以及被搜查者和财产之间的物理和心理联系。 调查将通过创造一种情况进行，在这种情况下将提出搜索请求。这种情境社会认知在法律的体系中的新应用将从总体上推进这一理论，使这一研究具有重要的理论意义。这项研究的结果将为法院在考虑同意搜查时提供重要信息，这对保护基本宪法权利至关重要。

Under the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, people have the fundamental right to be free from unreasonable searches. A search does not violate the 4th Amendment when a person voluntarily consents to be searched, and people routinely and frequently consent to police requests to search. The reasons why people consent to police searches, even when they are in possession of illegal material, are poorly understood. As a result, it is difficult for courts to assess voluntariness of consent in a systematic way. The purpose of this research is to identify factors that influence the voluntariness of consents and to identify factors that may increase coercion to consent. Situated cognition is a psychological theory arguing that the social and physical situation in which events occur can affect how a person perceives an event and behaves during an event. This project will apply situated social cognition to the consent search situation to determine what aspects of the social and physical situation in which the consent search takes place might make people more likely to feel coerced to consent. Across a series of studies, the influence of situational factors will be investigated such as the physical environment (size of the search space, lighting and temperature), the relative physical positions of the searcher and person being searched, and the physical and psychological connection between the person and the property being searched. The research will be conducted by creating a situation in which a request to search will be made. This new application of situated social cognition to the legal system will advance the theory generally, making the research important theoretically. The results of this research will provide important information to courts in their consideration of consent searches which will be essential to the protection of fundamental Constitutional rights.