Jeanine Skorinko

Stereotypic Crimes: How Group-Crime Associations Affect Memory and (Sometimes) Verdicts and Sentencing

Abstract Stereotype-based judgments in the legal system can be particularly damaging. In Experiment 1, we surveyed 179 participants to assess which of 55 crimes they viewed as stereotypical of 13 groups of people. Stereotypic crimes based on ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and age were found. We used these results to create crime scenarios for Experiments 2 and 3 that unconfounded crime stereotypicality and crime violence. We then examined the effects of stereotypic crimes with black or white defendants on mock jurors’ memories and decisions. Memory biases were found in line with the stereotypic crimes. Offenders’ verdicts and sentences were sometimes biased by stereotypic crimes. By unconfounding crime stereotypicality and violence, the results also demonstrate how violence influences biases in memories and decisions.

Perspective Taking Shapes the Impact of Significant-other Representations

Past research has shown that peoples reported beliefs come to correspond with the apparent beliefs of salient significant others (e.g., Andersen & Chen, 2002; Baldwin, 1997). The current research extends this work by examining the degree to which such effects are influenced by perspective taking. In a modification of the classic paradigm used by Baldwin and Holmes (1987), 96 undergraduates (33 males, 62 females, and 1 unreported) were primed to perspective take or given a neutral prime before visualizing an older family member and reading an article about sexual dreams. As predicted, perspective taking enhanced the effect of significant other priming; participants who took the perspective of an older family member liked the sex article less than those who did not perspective take. Experiment 2 (39 males and 28 female undergraduates) demonstrated that this consequence of perspective taking was limited to significant others and did not extend to category exemplars.

User-centric design of a personal assistance robot (FRASIER) for active aging

We present our preliminary results from the design process for developing the Worcester Polytechnic Institutes personal assistance robot, FRASIER, as an intelligent service robot for enabling active aging. The robot capabilities include vision-based object detection, tracking the user and help with carrying heavy items such as grocery bags or cafeteria trays. This work-in-progress report outlines our motivation and approach to developing the next generation of service robots for the elderly. Our main contribution in this paper is the development of a set of specifications based on the adopted user-centered design process, and realization of the prototype system designed to meet these specifications.

Reducing Prejudice Across Cultures via Social Tuning

This research examines whether culture influences the extent to which people’s attitudes tune toward others’ egalitarian beliefs. Hong Kong Chinese, but not American, participants were less prejudiced, explicitly and implicitly, toward homosexuals when they interacted with a person who appeared to hold egalitarian views as opposed to neutral views (Experiment 1). In Experiments 2 and 3, cultural concepts were manipulated. Americans and Hong Kong Chinese who were primed with a collectivist mind-set showed less explicit and implicit prejudice when the experimenter was thought to endorse egalitarian views than when no views were conveyed. Such differences were not found when both cultural groups were primed with an individualist mind-set. These findings suggest that cultural value orientations can help mitigate prejudice.

Shared reality through social tuning of implicit prejudice

Sharing reality with an interaction partner is a key element of social connections. One way in which shared reality can be formed in an interpersonal situation is through affiliative social tuning. Affliative social tuning occurs when individuals experience a desire to get along with their interaction partner and this affiliative motivation encourages the individual to spontaneously and genuinely align their attitudes and/or behaviors with their interaction partner to achieve a sense of shared reality. In this review, we examine when and how affiliative social tuning of implicit prejudice occurs. We also explore whether individuals garner shared reality by affiliating with ingroup members who seem to hold similar implicit beliefs.

Is “Bow” for an Arrow or for Hair? A Classroom Demonstration on Gender Differences in Interpreting Ambiguous Information

This article details a classroom demonstration of how gender differences in cognitive schemas can result in men and women differentially interpreting the same information. Students heard a series of six homonyms (e.g., bow and nail) spoken aloud and wrote down the first word with which they free-associated each homonym. When hearing the words (e.g., bow), men were more likely to respond with a male-gendered word (e.g., arrow), whereas women were more likely to respond with a female-gendered word (e.g., hair). The demonstration is easy to administer, takes approximately 10 min, results in strong differences, and improves students’ understanding of gender differences in cognitive schemas.

A cyber physical system testbed for assistive robotics technologies in the home

We present a cyber-physical system (CPS) testbed to enable the rapid development, testing, and deployment of assistive robotics technologies in the home of elderly individuals. We built a CPS testbed in a lab environment with initial capabilities allowing for the testing of both individual systems and collections of systems. The CPS testbed has communication, computation, sensing, and control resources available that can be leveraged by individual subsystems within the CPS. We present projects built by different design teams to be integrated in the CPS environment to help the elderly live independent lives and age in place. Finally, we describe a case study for the use of a mobile robot within the CPS to detect and respond in case an elderly person falls at home.

Human-centered design of a cyber-physical system for advanced response to Ebola (CARE).

We describe the process towards the design of a safe, reliable, and intuitive emergency treatment unit to facilitate a higher degree of safety and situational awareness for medical staff, leading to an increased level of patient care during an epidemic outbreak in an unprepared, underdeveloped, or disaster stricken area. We start with a human-centered design process to understand the design challenge of working with Ebola treatment units in Western Africa in the latest Ebola outbreak, and show preliminary work towards cyber-physical technologies applicable to potentially helping during the next outbreak.