Norbert L. Kerr

HARKing: Hypothesizing After the Results are Known:

This article considers a practice in scientific communication termed HARKing (Hypothesizing After the Results are Known). HARKing is defined as presenting a post hoc hypothesis (i.e., one based on or informed by ones results) in ones research report as if it were, in fact, an a priori hypotheses. Several forms of HARKing are identified and survey data are presented that suggests that at least some forms of HARKing are widely practiced and widely seen as inappropriate. I identify several reasons why scientists might HARK. Then I discuss several reasons why scientists ought not to HARK. It is conceded that the question of whether HARKings costs exceed its benefits is a complex one that ought to be addressed through research, open discussion, and debate. To help stimulate such discussion (and for those such as myself who suspect that HARKings costs do exceed its benefits), I conclude the article with some suggestions for deterring HARKing.

An Atlas of Interpersonal Situations

Introducing a new hobby for other people may inspire them to join with you. Reading, as one of mutual hobby, is considered as the very easy hobby to do. But, many people are not interested in this hobby. Why? Boring is the reason of why. However, this feel actually can deal with the book and time of you reading. Yeah, one that we will refer to break the boredom in reading is choosing an atlas of interpersonal situations as the reading material.

Communication, commitment, and cooperation in social dilemmas

Intragroup communication promotes cooperation in social dilemmas. Two explanations are plausible: discussion may (1) enhance feelings of group identity or (2) induce commitments to cooperate. Some remedies for social dilemmas (like group communication) may be subclassified as public welfare remedies (of which enhanced group identity is an example) vs cooperation-contingent remedies (of which commitment is an example). The efficacy of a cooperative act for enhancing the collective welfare should moderate remedies of the former but not the latter type. An experiment, using 441 female undergraduates, is reported in which group communication and the efficacy of cooperation were manipulated. As expected if communication induced commitments, but contrary to the group identity explanation, efficacy did not moderate the effect of group discussion. Other analyses provided more direct evidence that group members made and honored commitments to cooperate.

Asymmetric influence in mock jury deliberation: Jurors' bias for leniency.

Investigators have frequently noted a leniency bias in mock jury research, in which deliberation appears to induce greater leniency in criminal mock jurors. One manifestation of this bias, the asymmetry effect, suggests that proacquittal factions are more influential than proconviction factions of comparable size. A meta-analysis indicated that these asymmetry effects are reliable across a variety of experimental contexts. Experiment 1 examined the possibility that the leniency bias is restricted to the typical college-student subject population. The decisions of college-student and community mock jurors in groups beginning deliberation with equal faction sizes (viz., 2:2) were compared. The magnitude of the asymmetry effect did not differ between the two populations. We hypothesized that the asymmetry effect was caused by an asymmetric prodefendant standard of proof--the reasonable-doubt standard. In Experiment 2, subjects received either reasonable-doubt or preponderance-of-evidence instructions. After providing initial verdict preferences, some subjects deliberated in groups composed with an initial 2:2 split, whereas other subjects privately generated arguments for each verdict option. A significant asymmetry was found for groups in the reasonable-doubt condition, but group verdicts were symmetrical under the preponderance-of-evidence instructions. Shifts toward leniency in individual verdict preferences occurred for group members, but not for subjects who performed the argument-generation task. The theoretical and applied significance of these findings is discussed.

Pretrial publicity, judicial remedies, and jury bias

Although past research has established pretrial publicitys potential to bias juror judgment, there has been less attention given to the effectiveness of judicial remedies for combatting such biases. The present study examined the effectiveness of three remedies (judicial instructions, deliberation, and continuance) in combatting the negative impact of different types of pretrial publicity. Two different types of pretrial publicity were examined: (a) factual publicity (which contained incriminating information about the defendant) and (b) emotional publicity (which contained no explicitly incriminating information, but did contain information likely to arouse negative emotions). Neither instructions nor deliberation reduced the impact of either form of publicity; in fact, deliberation strengthened publicity biases. Both social decision scheme analysis and a content analysis of deliberation suggested that prejudicial publicity increases the persuasiveness and/or lessens the persuasibility of advocates of conviction relative to advocates of acquittal. Acontinuance of several days between exposure to the publicity and viewing the trial served as an effective remedy for the factual publicity, but not for the emotional publicity. The article concludes by discussing the potential roles of affect and memory in juror judgment and evaluating the available remedies for pretrial publicity.

Defendant-juror similarity and mock joror judgments

It was hypothesized that joror-defendant similarity would lead to greater leniency toward a criminal defendant when the evidence against that defendant was weak or inconclusive; but when evidence was strong, it was expected that this relationship would be reversed. In Study 1, religious similarity was found to be simply and positively related to evaluation of the defendant and leniency, a relationship unaffected by the strength of evidence. This pattern of results was attributed to (a) insufficiently strong evidence against the defendant and (b) the lack of anticipated jury deliberation, problems addressed in Study 2. In that study, when evidence was strong against the defendant, juror-defendant racial similarity did increase the likelihood of conviction, but only when jurors anticipated being in the racial minority in their jury. Implications of the findings for psychological theory and for voir dire were discussed.

That Still, Small Voice: Commitment to Cooperate as an Internalized Versus a Social Norm

Recent research suggests that group discussion of a social dilemma may increase cooperative behavior because group members honor the commitments they make during the group discussion. This article asks whether people honor such commitments because of the social consequences of violating them or because of the internal personal consequences of doing so. Experiment 1 replicated and extended previous research showing that the anonymity of ones cooperative/noncooperative choice does not moderate the effect of group discussion. Experiment 2 examined the possibility that commitments to cooperate were kept due to mindless adherence to a prior decision, rather than to an internalized norm. Contrary to the former possibility, enhancing mindfulness did not moderate the effect of group discussion. The scope and implications of personal norms of commitment are discussed.

Social transition schemes: Charting the group's road to agreement.

Outlines a stochastic model of the group decision-making process: the social transition scheme model. Two key assumptions are identified: (1) The path-independence assumption holds that where the group goes next depends on its current state but not on how it reached that state, and (2) the stationarity assumption holds that the likelihood of any particular movement toward consensus does not depend on how long the group has been deliberating. The deliberations of mock juries were analyzed to see whether the process was path independent and stationary; 126 female and 156 male undergraduates were Ss. In addition, the effects of group experience, member sex, and deliberation time limits in the decision-making process were examined. Results show that the process was path dependent and nonstationary. The path dependence reflected a momentum effect: Groups tended to continue in the direction in which they had just moved. However, incorrectly assuming path independence and stationarity had little effect on the predictive accuracy of the model. Group experience speeded up movement when the group was sharply divided. Member sex and time limitations had no effect on the decision process.

The detection of social exclusion: Evolution and beyond.

This article analyzes how humans detect threats to social inclusion. The authors begin by noting the likely evolutionary roots of (a) the human sensitivity to threats of both interpersonal and group exclusion and (b) the nature of the primitive system that humans developed for detecting such threats. The authors then propose seven generic classes of signals (hurting, avoiding, exploiting, deregulating, disengaging, differentiating, and slandering) that modern humans use in detecting exclusion and compare our taxonomy to prior empirical attempts to identify rejection cues. Finally, the authors offer a preliminary model of how the modern sociometer operates, emphasizing the importance of behavioral expectations and attribution processes, and discuss open questions suggested by our analysis.

Use of the simulation method in the study of jury behavior: Some methodological considerations.

Current literature reviews (Davis, Bray, & Holt, 1977; Elwork & Sales, in press; Gerbasi, Zuckerman, & Reis, 1977) reveal a lively interest in the study of jury functioning. In most of the extant research, simulations in the form of a mock trial have emerged as the primary research vehicle. Despite its popularity, a great deal of criticism has been leveled at this mode of investigation (e.g., Bermant, McGuire, McKinley, & Salo, 1974; Konecni, Mulcahy, & Ebbesen, in press; Colasanto & Sanders, Note 1; Miller, Fontes, Boster, & Sunnafrank, Note 2). While such criticism deserves thoughtful consideration, there also seems to be a need for an analysis that clearly examines variations in mock-trial simulations and their relative strengths and weaknesses.