Dena M. Gromet

Political ideology affects energy-efficiency attitudes and choices

This research demonstrates how promoting the environment can negatively affect adoption of energy efficiency in the United States because of the political polarization surrounding environmental issues. Study 1 demonstrated that more politically conservative individuals were less in favor of investment in energy-efficient technology than were those who were more politically liberal. This finding was driven primarily by the lessened psychological value that more conservative individuals placed on reducing carbon emissions. Study 2 showed that this difference has consequences: In a real-choice context, more conservative individuals were less likely to purchase a more expensive energy-efficient light bulb when it was labeled with an environmental message than when it was unlabeled. These results highlight the importance of taking into account psychological value-based considerations in the individual adoption of energy-efficient technology in the United States and beyond.

Red States, Blue States, and Brain States: Issue Framing, Partisanship, and the Future of Neurolaw in the United States

Advances in neuroscience are beginning to shape law and public policy, giving rise to the field of “neurolaw.” The impact of neuroscientific evidence on how laws are written and interpreted in practice will depend in part on how neurolaw is understood by the public. Drawing on a nationally representative telephone survey experiment, this article presents the first evidence on public approval of neurolaw. We find that the public is generally neutral in its support for neuroscience-based legal reforms. However, how neurolaw is framed affects support based on partisanship: Republicans’ approval of neurolaw decreases when neuroscience is seen as primarily serving to reduce offender culpability, whereas Democrats’ approval is unaffected by how neurolaw is framed. These results suggest that both framing and partisanship may shape the future of neuroscience-based reforms in law and policy.

Pleasure From Another’s Pain The Influence of a Target’s Hedonic States on Attributions of Immorality and Evil

Can people’s feelings about harm (i.e., their hedonic reactions) lead them to be morally condemned, even if they do not cause the harm themselves? We show that individuals who experience pleasure at serious harm that has befallen another person are judged both immoral and evil. This effect occurs for harm-causing actors, and for observers who play no role in causing the harm; actors can also be judged as immoral and evil when they experience mere indifference (Study 1). Observers are more likely to be similarly judged when they experience direct rather than indirect pleasure from harm caused to another (Study 2). The effects of pleasure are dissociable from those of malevolent desires (Study 3). Targets’ experience of pleasure at the harm caused to another person leads to the social exclusion of observers (Studies 1-3) and the harsh punishment of actors, including the death penalty (Studies 1, 4a, and 4b).

How Perceptions of Mortality and HIV Morbidity Relate to Substance Abuse Problems and Risky Sexual Behaviors Among Former Juvenile Offenders

This study investigates whether high-risk young adults’ perceptions of their likelihood of living to age 35 and of acquiring HIV are related to their substance abuse problems and risky sexual behaviors. The sample consists of data from the 72- and 87-month follow-up assessments of 449 juvenile offenders referred to probation in 1999 and 2000. Results indicate that believing one is likely to get HIV is associated with having more concurrent substance use problems and engaging in more risky sexual behaviors. Longitudinal analyses indicate that youth who think they are likely to get HIV are at greater risk for later substance abuse problems and risky sexual behaviors, though these results are only marginally significant. The results demonstrate that respondents are aware of some of the risks associated with their recent substance using and sexual behaviors, but that holding these perceptions does not result in a reduction of these behaviors.

Saying No to Neurolaw: When and Why the U.S. Public Disapproves of Neuroscience in the Criminal Courts

Neurolaw is fast emerging on the scholarly and legal scene. As neuroscience findings receive more attention and incorporation into the legal system, a critical yet unexplored question is: How will neuroscience-based explanations for behavior affect public support for change in the criminal justice system? Public support for criminal law reform will be heavily influenced by the ways in which the issue is framed, and which framing (amongst different and potentially conflicting views) citizens choose to adopt. Recognizing the central role that issue framing plays in the formation of public opinion, this study examines the influence of neuroscience-based explanations of behavior on public support for legislative changes in the criminal justice system. We investigate how citizens respond when they are presented with multiple, often contradictory frames. This marks the first research to date examining how individuals react to contrasting arguments about the influence that neuroscience should have on the legal system. The results of two large web-based experiments, as well as a nationally representative phone experiment, in which participants were presented with either a positive or negative frame before reading a neutral neuroscience study, suggest that, controlling for a host of individual demographics, the framing of neurolaw, and the way in which it interacts with political identification, is influential with regard to policy support, voting intentions, and case-level punishment decisions. Specifically, whereas a positive framing of the potential for neuroscience to influence the law (e.g., reduce violent crimes) does not result in different reactions based on political ideology, a negative framing (e.g., criminals will not be held responsible for their actions) makes conservatives less supportive of legal reforms based on neuroscience, less likely to vote for a judge who endorses such reforms, and advocate more punishment of an offender. And, we found that this judgment was driven by conservatives more negative view of the offender, thus elevating how punishment-worthy he was.