Anthony N. Doob

Status of Frustrator as an Inhibitor of Horn-Honking Responses

(1968). Status of Frustrator as an Inhibitor of Horn-Honking Responses. The Journal of Social Psychology: Vol. 76, No. 2, pp. 213-218.

Sentence Severity and Crime: Accepting the Null Hypothesis

The literature on the effects of sentence severity on crime levels has been reviewed numerous times in the past twenty-five years. Most reviews conclude that there is little or no consistent evidence that harsher sanctions reduce crime rates in Western populations. Nevertheless, most reviewers have been reluctant to conclude that variation in the severity of sentence does not have differential deterrent impacts. A reasonable assessment of the research to date-with a particular focus on studies conducted in the past decade-is that sentence severity has no effect on the level of crime in society. It is time to accept the null hypothesis.

News media influences on public views of sentencing

Opinion polls in Canada, the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and elsewhere suggest that most members of the public would like their criminal courts to be harsher. Does media coverage of criminal sentencing contribute to a preference for harsher sentencing? Most people derive their information about sentencing from the news media and content analyses of news stories in Canada and the United States demonstrate that crimes of violence and sentences of imprisonment are overrepresented. Moreover, the news media provide little systematic information about the sentencing process or its underlying principles. This article reports the results of three studies examining the effects of media coverage on public opinion about sentencing. Subjects who read actual newspaper stories about sentencing that appeared in Canadian newspapers rated most reported sentences as too lenient. However, the specific account they read influenced their leniency judgments. Furthermore, in one experiment, participants assigned to read a newspaper account of a sentencing decision supported harsher sentences than participants who read a summary of actual court documents from the sentencing hearing.

The Importance of School: Protecting At-Risk Youth From Early Offending

Using longitudinal data, this study explored the protective effect of a school bond (on violent and nonviolent delinquency) across a variety of risk factors. A strong school bond protected children with early aggression from continuing on in violence 2 years later. A strong school bond also protected children with numerous environmental risks from violent and nonviolent offending. Finally, a strong school bond acted as a protective factor against the influence of peers who were delinquent (for nonviolent offending only). From a policy perspective, these findings suggest that zero-tolerance polices that aim to exclude children considered to be a problem through suspensions or expulsions could be counterproductive.

The Effect of Urban Neighborhood Disorder on Evaluations of the Police and Courts

Are people dissatisfied with the courts as well as the police when they perceive high levels of disorder in their neighborhoods? Consistent with previous research, this study, using a representative sample of Canadian adults, demonstrates that people are significantly more negative about the police when they perceive high levels of disorder. They are not, however, more negative toward the courts when confronted with these social problems. It is possible that they have heard the police rhetoric—namely, that the police form the “thin blue line” between order and chaos. Although the public holds the police and the courts responsible for increasing rates of crime, victimization, and fear, they do not see the courts as being responsible for neighborhood disorder, which they see as being the sole responsibility of the police.

Delay of measurement and the effects of film violence.

Abstract In two 2 × 2 factorial design experiments, subjects were shown either a violent or a neutral 7-min movie. The dependent measure was taken either immediately after watching the movie or after a delay of about 20 min. In Experiment I where subjects ostensibly gave electric shocks to a confederate, it was found that longer shocks were given in the condition where subjects watched the aggressive movie and gave shock immediately afterward than in the other conditions. In Experiment II, using a simple form of the digit symbol test, the subjects who watched the aggressive movie and were measured immediately afterward showed a greater improvement than did subjects in the other conditions. The results from both experiments were interpreted as lending support to the hypothesis that part of the short-term effects of film aggression is mediated by arousal caused by the film.

Race, Ethnicity, and Criminal Justice in Canada

The relationship between crime and race or ethnicity has important implications for Canada. The constitution affirms the countrys multicultural heritage. As in other Western nations, certain minorities are overrepresented in the prison population. Aboriginal and black offenders account for a disproportionate number of admissions. There has not been much research on why such disproportions exist, except concerning Aboriginal Canadians. Canada is not immune to problems of discrimination. Compared with whites, black accuseds are significantly more likely to be denied pretrial release on bail and, for certain offenses, to be incarcerated.

Punitive Trends and Stable Imprisonment Rates in Canada

The stability of Canada’s level of imprisonment from 1960 to 2005 contrasts with the increased incarceration rates experienced by Canada’s most obvious comparators—the United States and England and Wales. Canada is not immune to pressure for harsher practices and policies, but at least until the end of 2005 it countered or balanced these trends with other moderating forces. Canadians have largely minimized the impact of risk factors at the root of higher imprisonment levels elsewhere. Certain protective factors have limited the extent to which Canada has adopted the same punitive policies documented in the United States and England and Wales. Several potentially ominous signs on the Canadian horizon, however, could erode the balanced approach that has characterized Canada’s response to wider punitive trends over the past forty‐five years.

The Effects on Arousal of Frustration and Aggressive Films.

Abstract In two two-by-two factorial experiments, subjects were either frustrated or not, and then were shown either a film depicting aggression or a neutral film. In the first experiment, performance on a digit-symbol test was measured before and immediately after the manipulations. Subjects who had either been frustrated or who had watched the aggressive movie performed better on the second digit-symbol test than did subjects who had experienced neither or both of these manipulations. In the second experiment, blood pressure was measured before and immediately after the manipulations. On various indices of arousal, the most arousal was shown for subjects who had been frustrated and who had watched the aggressive film. Subjects who had not been frustrated and who had not watched the aggressive film showed the least arousal, and subjects who had experienced one or the other of these manipulations were in between. Given that performance on the digit-symbol test has been shown to be an inverted U function of arousal, both of these experiments support the notion that the effects on arousal of frustration and aggressive movies are additive. This is directly counter to the idea that movies involving aggression are tension reducing for either frustrated or nonfrustrated subjects.

Attribution and aggression: The misattribution of anger ☆

An experiment was designed to test the effect of misattribution of anger on subsequent aggression. Subjects were induced to take a placebo with half of the subjects led to expect arousal symptoms and the other half led to expect relaxation. Crosscutting the pill manipulation, half of the subjects were provoked by a confederate and half were not. All subjects were then given an opportunity to aggress against the confederate. As predicted, relaxation pill-provoked subjects were significantly more aggressive than subjects in the other conditions (p < .025), with arousal pill-provoked subjects no more aggressive than no provocation controls.