David A. Houston

When Due Process Is of No Consequence: Moral Mandates and Presumed Defendant Guilt or Innocence

Most current theories of justice are focused on how social identity, instrumental concerns, or both shape how people decide whether something is fair or unfair. A neglected consideration is that people may also be concerned with justice because they strive to be authentic moral beings by acting on the basis of values closely tied to their personal identity. We posited that self-expressive moral positions or stands (“moral mandates”) are important determinants of how people reason about fairness. Supporting this notion, we found that (a) people see some trial outcomes in morally mandated terms, e.g., that the guilty must be convicted and punished, and the innocent must not; (b) convicting a defendant believed to be innocent or acquitting a defendant believed to be guilty were seen as unfair, regardless of whether the verdict was achieved by a fair or unfair investigation and trial (Study 1); and (c) a guilty defendants death was seen as equally fair, and an innocent defendants death was equally unfair, if it was achieved by a trial that led to the death penalty or by vigilantism (Study 2). Procedural propriety only mattered when defendant guilt was ambiguous.

The influence of unique features and direction of comparison of preferences

Abstract Preference choices between two objects belonging to the same category were examined as a function of (i) the nature of the unique versus shared features of the two objects (unique good-shared bad features, unique bad-shared good features) and (ii) which object was made the starting point, or Subject, of the comparison and which was made the target, or Referent. In was expected on the basis of a feature matching model that the unique features of the Subject of comparison would determine the preference. Thus, the Referent would be preferred when negative features were unique, and the Subject when positive features were unique. Experiment 1 was designed so that subjects would use the more recently seen object as the Subject of comparison and the first seen object as the Referent. Results were consistent with predictions. Experiments 2 and 3 yielded similar results, indicating the use of the more recent object as the Subject of comparison. Experiment 4 presented the features of each item in an interweaved manner. All the features of one of the items were then reinstated as a unified set as subjects indicated their preferences. Results were consistent with expectations as the unreinstated item was preferred when negative features were unique, and the reinstated item when positive features were unique. The implications of these results for understanding the general role of unique features and the direction of comparison in judgments of preference and decision making are discussed.

Legal, social, and biological definitions of pedophilia

Although there is substantial evidence in the historical and anthropological record of the sexual use of children by adults, surprisingly little is known about the etiology of pedophilia or its relation to other forms of sexual aggression. After briefly reviewing the research on pedophilia, we argue that one major difficulty in conducting or interpreting such research lies in the different definitions “pedophilia” has received. Most important, much of the research has accepted a legal definition of pedophilia, treating all offenders convicted of “child molestation” as pedophiles, regardless of the age or appearance of the victim. We argue that a distinction should be made between biological children and sociolegal children. Laws governing child molestation reflect sociolegal childhood, regardless of its discrepancy with biological childhood. “True” pedophiles should be identified by their preference for biological children. By using legal classifications, researchers may well be confusing two distinct types of offenders, child molesters and rapists, and confounding attempts to understand pedophilia.

Persuasiveness of in-group and out-group political messages : The case of negative political campaigning

Two experiments investigated the processes underlying evaluation of in-group and out-group political messages from candidates involved in a negative political campaign. The effectiveness of different types of attack messages depended on (a) the political affiliation with the source and target of an attack message and (b) the justification provided for the attack. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the content of the attack messages affected evaluations of an in-group candidate but not of an out-group candidate. Experiment 2 indicated that the use of apparent justification for attack messages resulted in more positive evaluations of an out-group source but diminished preference for an in-group source. The results indicate that although participants were sensitive to message content from both in-group and out-group sources, less stringent criteria were used when evaluating out-group political messages than when evaluating in-group political messages.

The Psychological Determinants of Candidate Evaluation and Voting Preference

As the information age marches forward, citizens are presented with an increasingly large and complex array of political information. Political information is available for consumption in newspapers, radio, television, magazines, the World Wide Web, and in conversations with our peers. How do citizens digest this information for purposes of arriving at a voting preference? What is the nature and type of information that voters rely upon when forming a voting preference? These two questions are the primary focus of this chapter. The first involves the cognitive processes that underlie the acquisition of new information about a political candidate, and the use of this information, in the context of previously acquired knowledge, to make a voting decision. The second involves the substantive content of the information that enters into these processes (e.g., party, issue positions, trait assessments).

Comparison of Paired Choice Alternatives and Choice Conflict

Approach-approach and avoidance-avoidance choice conflicts arise from an independent evaluation of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the features of the choice alternatives. The conflicts can also be determined by the manner in which the features are evaluated and highlighted by the comparison of the choice alternatives. Two such comparison-for-choice effects are addressed. The first is the identification of shared and unique features of the alternatives by means of a feature-matching comparison process. The second involves political choice. Acting in synergy, negative and positive political advertising campaigns can focus the choice on either the bad features or the good features of competing candidates.

Cancellation and Focus: A Feature-matching Model of Choice

A cancellation-and-focus model of choice is presented. This model proposes a comparison process involving the matching of the features of the items in the choice set. The process emphasizes the direction of comparison, that is, which alternative is the starting point (Subject) of comparison and which is the target (Referent) of comparison. The features of the Subject are mapped onto the Referent. In addition, the model stresses the cancellation of features shared by the alternatives (shared features are irrelevant for preferences) and a focus on the unique features of the Subject. The model is used to predict many aspects of choice. Which alternative is chosen depends on the direction of comparison and the valence of the unique features. The choice is reversed as the direction of comparison is reversed. The model also predicts the degree of pre-decision conflict (less when the items have unique good features) and the level of post-decision satisfaction (greater when the pairs have unique good features). E...

Combining Trait and Stereotype Expectancies in Person Memory

Person memory research has investigated the effects of trait and stereotype expectancies on the organization and retrieval of expectancy-congruent and expectancy-incongruent behavioral information. We extend this work by investigating the combined effects of stereotype and trait expectancies. Participants were presented with either (a) a trait expectancy only, with no information about the targets ethnicity, or (b) an expectation that the target was African American as well as a trait expectancy. When no information was presented about the targets ethnicity, the standard advantage in recall for trait-incongruent behaviors was found. However, when information that the target was African American was added to trait information, this recall advantage for trait-incongruent behaviors was reduced for both European American and African American participants. These results are discussed in terms of the combination of trait and stereotype expectancies.