Kyle C. Scherr

Self-Verification as a Mediator of Mothers’ Self-Fulfilling Effects on Adolescents’ Educational Attainment

This research examined whether self-verification acts as a general mediational process of self-fulfilling prophecies. The authors tested this hypothesis by examining whether self-verification processes mediated self-fulfilling prophecy effects within a different context and with a different belief and a different outcome than has been used in prior research. Results of longitudinal data obtained from mothers and their adolescents (N = 332) indicated that mothers’ beliefs about their adolescents’ educational outcomes had a significant indirect effect on adolescents’ academic attainment through adolescents’ educational aspirations. This effect, observed over a 6-year span, provided evidence that mothers’ self-fulfilling effects occurred, in part, because mothers’ false beliefs influenced their adolescents’ own educational aspirations, which adolescents then self-verified through their educational attainment. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed.

Miranda at 50: A Psychological Analysis

In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a controversial ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, which required police to inform suspects, prior to custodial interrogation, of their constitutional rights to silence and to counsel. In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Miranda, we present a psychological analysis of the Court’s ruling. We show how the Court’s assumption that the provisions of the Miranda ruling would enable suspects to make knowing, intelligent, and voluntary decisions regarding whether to invoke or waive their constitutional rights has not been borne out by scientific research. Hence, we argue that even well-adjusted, intelligent adults are at risk of succumbing to police pressure during custodial interrogation. We conclude with policy implications and directions for future Miranda research.

“Midnight Confessions”: The Effect of Chronotype Asynchrony on Admissions of Wrongdoing

Confession evidence is highly incriminating in court. We examined the interaction between chronotype and time of day on the confession decisions of 60 participants using an experimental paradigm. Pre-identified morning- and evening-type people were randomly assigned to participate in morning or evening sessions. Results supported an interactional asynchrony hypothesis that individuals are more likely to confess during “off-peak” periods (i.e., evening-types in the morning and morning-types in the evening). This interaction was obtained for both high- and low-seriousness transgressions. These results suggest that chronotype asynchrony constitutes a significant risk factor for false confessions and the wrongful convictions that often follow.

Analytic Thinking Reduces Anti-Atheist Bias in Voting Intentions

ABSTRACT Research has demonstrated that priming analytic thinking reduces adherence to religious ideas. The current studies examined whether analytic thinking primes can also increase acceptance of secular ideas and ameliorate anti-atheist prejudice. In Study 1, participants who were primed to think analytically demonstrated less anti-atheist prejudice (operationalized as willingness to vote for an atheist) and increased levels of agreement with secular ideas. Mediation analyses indicated that the ability of an analytic prime to reduce anti-atheist prejudice and facilitate agreement with secular ideas was related to increases in analytic thinking (operationalized as performance on the Cognitive Reflections Test). Study 2 extended the findings of the first study and demonstrated that, among a sample of young adults, higher levels of analytic thinking predicted decreased anti-atheist prejudice in the context of voting intentions in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Basic and applied implications of these findings are discussed.

Economic Issues Are Moral Issues: The Moral Underpinnings of the Desire to Reduce Wealth Inequality

Economic inequality is a pervasive and growing source of social problems such as poor health, crime, psychological disorders, and lack of trust in others. U.S. citizens across the political spectrum both underperceive the extent of economic inequality and would prefer to live in a society with much less inequality than both exist in reality and in their subjective estimations. Across multiple studies, we examined the ability of “moral foundations” to predict people’s desire to reduce economic inequality (while also replicating research showing widespread desire for a more equal society). Moral foundations endorsements consistently predicted desire to reduce inequality even when controlling for other relevant factors (e.g., political orientation). In addition, requests for donations to an organization focused on reducing economic inequality were able to elicit more money when the requests largely appealed to the type of moral foundations endorsed by participants.

Perpetually stigmatized: False confessions prompt underlying mechanisms that motivate negative perceptions of exonerees.

Even in the fortunate instances of being exonerated of their wrongful convictions, exonerees often struggle to assimilate back into society. Although research has established that exonerees experience stigma and a general lack of reintegration support, little is known about underlying reasons that motivate such negative perceptions. This research examined whether the evidence and crime associated with a wrongful conviction could initiate a process that alters people’s perceptions of exonerees’ intelligence and mental health status, and, in turn, undermine people’s judgments of exonerees’ guilt and subsequent willingness to support reintegration services. Participants (N = 253) read a news story about an exoneree who was wrongfully convicted of either murder or grand theft auto resulting from either a false confession or eyewitness misidentification. Participants then offered their perceptions of the exoneree’s intelligence and mental health followed by guilt-confidence judgments. Last, participants indicated their willingness to support reintegration services (psychological counseling, career counseling, and job training). Results indicated that wrongful convictions stemming from a false confession caused people to perceive the exoneree as less intelligent and these judgments, in turn, were associated with perceptions that the exoneree suffered from mental health issues which, subsequently, influenced participants’ uncertainty of the exoneree’s innocence. The string of perceptions and judgments consequently undermined people’s willingness to support each of the reintegration services. The observed effects provide empirical evidence for reforms that automatically guarantee support services for exonerees in order to overcome potential biases aimed as those who have been wrongfully convicted.

Police tactics and guilt status uniquely influence suspects’ physiologic reactivity and resistance to confess.

Research has identified numerous factors that influence suspects during police interrogations. However, the dynamics between individuals’ physiologic reactivity and their confession decision making is in its infancy. This research sought to advance the interrogation literature by examining the relationships among different interrogation tactics, suspects’ resistance to confess, and their physiologic reactivity during a mock interrogation. After manipulating innocence and guilt, participants (N = 154) were accused and interrogated using either a minimization or false evidence tactic. Participants’ physiologic reactivity was operationalized using their systolic blood pressure, and confession resistance was quantified as the number of times participants refused to confess. Results demonstrated that participants exhibited more physiologic reactivity after being confronted with false evidence ploys than minimization. Furthermore, innocent participants resisted confessing more than guilty participants, but innocents confronted with false evidence resisted confessing to a greater extent than innocents confronted with minimization. Moreover, a moderated-mediation analysis indicated that although innocents resisted confessing more when confronted with false evidence than those confronted with minimization, these innocents sustained a significantly higher level of physiologic reactivity. The results of the conditional indirect relationship suggest that innocents who are confronted with false evidence may resist the most but at a cost—their greater resistance may exhaust them and undermine subsequent decision making. These results offer support for reforms aimed at reducing the length of interrogations and the use of interrogation tactics that unnecessarily increase false confession rates.

The accumulation of stereotype-based self-fulfilling prophecies.

A recurring theme in the psychological literature is that the self-fulfilling effect of stereotypes can accumulate across perceivers. This article provides the first empirical support for this long-standing hypothesis. In three experiments (Ns = 123–241), targets more strongly confirmed a stereotype as the number of perceivers who held stereotypic expectations about them increased. A fourth experiment (N = 121) showed that new perceivers judged targets according to the stereotypic behaviors they had previously been channeled to adopt, an effect that even occurred among perceivers who were privy to the fact that targets’ behavior had been shaped by the actions of others. The authors discuss ways in which these effects may contribute to group inequalities.

Godless by association: Deficits in trust mediate antiatheist stigma-by-association.

In the United States, atheists elicit high levels of sociopolitical rejection that is primarily motivated by a lack of trust. Across three studies, we use evaluative conditioning (EC) as a theoretical framework to evaluate whether these deficits extended to candidates who are not atheists themselves but merely perceived to be associated with atheism. Study 1 found that implicit trust, explicit trust, and voting intentions toward target candidates were all negatively impacted by an EC procedure that paired a candidates face with words related to atheism. Study 2 found that trust and political support for a Christian candidate was eroded when he expressed proatheist public policy position. In both experiments, trust mediated the effects of atheist associations on voting intentions for religiously affiliated participants. Study 3 found the same moderated-mediation pattern. Religiously affiliated participants who perceived Barack Obama as being more favorable toward atheists were less likely to vote for him, in large part due to a lack of trust. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Knowingly but Naively: The Overpowering Influence of Innocence on Interrogation Rights Decision-Making.

Most suspects waive the guaranteed protections that interrogation rights afford them against police intimidation. One factor thought to motivate suspects’ inclination to waive their rights stems from the acquiescence bias whereby suspects mindlessly comply with interrogators’ requests. However, research bearing on the phenomenology of innocence has demonstrated the power of innocents’ mindset, which could motivate some innocent suspects to waive their rights knowingly (instead of mindlessly complying). To test these ideas, participants (N = 178) were (a) rightfully (guilty) or wrongfully (innocent) accused of wrongdoing during an experimental session, (b) administered 1 of 2 forms that by signing either waived or invoked their rights to a student advocate, and (c) given questions to assess their degree of knowing during the decision-making process (i.e., extent to which individuals were cognizant of their decisions). Results demonstrated that unknowing innocent and guilty individuals tended to passively comply, engaging in a pre-interrogation acquiescence bias by signing waive and invoke forms at similar rates. But, as participants became more cognizant of their decisions, they acquiesced at lower rates and their change from acquiescence differed depending on their status. As innocents became more cognizant, they signed the waiver form at higher rates than the invoke form, thereby demonstrating that innocence can motivate some suspects to knowingly forgo their rights. Conversely, as guilty individuals became more cognizant, they signed the invoke form at higher rates than the waiver form. These findings have implications for reforming pre-interrogation protocols, protecting suspects’ civil liberties, and preventing innocents from offering false self-incriminating evidence.