In information gathering interviews, follow-up questions are asked to clarify and extend initial witness accounts. Across two experiments, we examined the efficacy of open-ended questions following an account about a multi-perpetrator event. In Experiment 1, 50 mock-witnesses used the timeline technique or a free recall format to provide an…

Few studies have investigated eyewitnesses' ability to predict their later lineup performance, known as "predecision confidence." We applied calibration analysis in two experiments comparing predecision confidence (immediately after encoding but prior to a lineup) to postdecision confidence (immediately after a lineup) to determine which…

The reaction time-based concealed information test (RT-CIT) has been used to judge the veracity of an examinees claim to be naïve by using RTs to test for recognition of relevant details. Here, we explore the validity of the RT-CIT to generate new knowledge about the incident--the searching CIT. In a mock terrorism study (n = 60) the RT-CIT not…

Confidentiality represents a core principle of research ethics and forms a standard practice in social research. However, what should a researcher do if they learn about illegal activities or harm during the research process? Few systematic studies consider researchers' attitudes and reactions in such situations. This paper analyzes this issue on…

Condemnation is ubiquitous in the social world and adults treat condemnation as a costly signal. We explore when children begin to treat condemnation as a signal by presenting 4- to 9-year-old children (N = 435) with stories involving a condemner of stealing and a noncondemner. Children were asked to predict who would be more likely to steal as…

In a cloud computing environment, traditional digital forensic processes (such as turning off the computer to image the computer hard drive) can be disruptive to businesses because the data of businesses may be co-mingled with other content. As technology changes, the way digital forensics acquisitions are conducted are also changing. The change…

Forensic science practitioners compare visual evidence samples (e.g. fingerprints) and decide if they originate from the same person or different people (i.e. fingerprint 'matching'). These tasks are perceptually and cognitively complex--even practising professionals can make errors--and what limited research exists suggests that existing…

Objective: To determine whether college men's perceptions of campus drinking norms, aggregated at the institution-level, predicted heavy episodic drinking and sexual violence perpetration. Participants: Data were collected from a sample of 1144 first-year male college freshmen enrolled at one of thirty four-year institutions in the state of…

Recent policy discussions have proposed government-guaranteed jobs, including for youth. One key potential benefit of youth employment is a reduction in criminal justice contact. Prior work on summer youth employment programs has documented little-to-no effect of the program on crime during the program but has found decreases in violent and other…

At the level of the 50 U.S. states, an interconnected nexus of well-being variables exists. These variables strongly correlate with estimates of state IQ in interesting ways. However, the state IQ estimates are now more than 16 years old, and the state well-being estimates are over 12 years old. Updated state IQ and well-being estimates are…

This research sought to identify a potential process by which intergenerational crime occurs, focusing on the effect of parental incarceration on adolescents' subsequent arrests. We drew from Matsueda's work on reflected appraisals as an explanatory mechanism for this effect. Thus, the present research examined whether caregivers' and adolescents'…

Due to the emotional and social burden on Americans stemming from firearm injury and death, school psychologists (SPs) must be equipped with an understanding of risk factors that could lead to students engaging in gun violence. SPs are ideally situated due to their training and expertise in promoting healthy development in children and youth, as…

This research aims to contribute to understanding what criminalization for boys of color looks like in urban elementary school settings and to offering insights into what we must do to disrupt criminalization in urban schools. Using multiple sources of data from four elementary schools across a 2-year period, we found that boys of color in the…

Purpose: Half of British university students experience assault and harassment behaviours; few report them. Bystander intervention training has been recommended as a means of reducing these behaviours, but there is little evidence about their potential effectiveness in UK contexts. The purpose of this paper is to understand UK students' attitudes…

This article focuses on the topic of campus crime reporting, particularly students' stated likelihood of reporting crime incidents to the college public safety department, municipal police, or a member of the library staff. The survey vignette design involves experimental manipulation of several situational variables in line with the unresponsive…