applied psych quiz 2 Flashcards
What is a repeated event?
• A repeated event is the same type of event that is experienced on multiple occasions. Each event shares a common underlying theme and structure
• There are many different situations where people will find themselves repeatedly victimised
- Domestic violence
- Child sexual abuse
- Stalking/harassment
- Bullying
Repeated events and memory evidence
• Complainants need to be able to particularize one instance of abuse by recalling specific information about the time, place and content of the abuse
• Legal requirements for statements
- Need to provide incident specific information about at least one instance of abuse time, place, what happened
Memory for repeated events
• Historically, research into memory for repeated events has focused on child populations
- Primarily to understand the children’s memory for repeated abuse (e.g. child sexual abuse)
• Whereas, memory for predate events in adults victims/witnesses has received less research attention
- This might be because adults were considered to be are unlikely to remain in situations where they would be repeatedly victimised?
• How can you research memory for repeated events?
• The most common methodology is:
- Compare memory for a single event to memory for an instance of a repeated event
Measuring memory performance
• How do we measure memory?
- Primarily interested in memory accuracy for a target event (i.e. whether reported details match what actually happened)
• Memory accuracy is operationalised in different ways:
- Correct details: experienced details from the target event
- Internal intrusions errors: experienced details from non-target events
- External intrusions errors: non-experienced details (i.e. made up details)
Key findings: correct details
• Repeated event group tends to report fewer correct details about a target event compared to the single event group
Key findings: incorrect details
- Repeated event group tends to report more internal intrusions about a target event compared to the single event group
- Repeated event group tends to report fewer external intrusions about a target event compared to the single event group
Memory for single and repeated events
• The findings indicate that memory for repeated events might be organised differently than memory for a single event
Theoretical framework
• These theories account for the difference in memory for single and repeated events:
- Fuzzy trace theory
- Source monitoring framework
Fuzzy trace theory
• Two types of memory traces are encoded for each type of event
- Verbatim traces: encodes the exact surface details of an event
- Gist traces: encodes the overall meaning and general structure of the event
• Each time the same type of event is repeated:
- A verbatim trace is encoded during each new event the same gist trace is activated and strengthened
• Therefore, this theory predicts that when someone has experienced a repeated event they might eb more likely to access the ‘gist’ of an event rather than specific details
• This accounts for why repeated event participants report fewer accurate details (i.e. fewer correct details, more internal errors) than single event participants
Source monitoring framework
• Memory encoding
- People encode memory traces based on the content of the event rather than when it occurred (i.e. the source/origin of the event)
• Memory retrieval
- Therefore, when people retrieve a memory trace, they need make a decision about when the details of an event occurred
- This is when source monitoring errors can occur
• Source monitoring errors: associating wan experienced detail with the incorrect occurrence. This is akin to an ‘internal intrusion error’
• Therefore, people that experience repeated events might be good at remembering what (the content) happened across the instances but struggle to determine when it occurred (during which event)
Stress and memory
• Is memory better for stressful events compared to neutral events?
• Flashbulb memories
- People report having exceptionally clear, vivid and detailed recollections of unexpected and traumatic events they have experienced (e.g. 9/11, JFK assassination etc.)
- However, it is difficult to determine memory accuracy for autobiographical memories. Need to look at some lab studies!
• Researchers have compared memory for closely matched stressful and neutral stimuli
• More correct details are recalled for the about the stressful stimuli than the neutral stimuli
• These findings suggest that emotional arousal (i.e. stress) during encoding appears to enhance long-term memory
• Overall, previous research and theories indicate that stressful events will have an enhancing effect on witness memory relative to emotionally neutral events
• But does stress impact memory for single and repeated events differently?
Conclusion: stress and repeated event memory
- The findings suggest that experiencing repeated stressful events might make someone report fewer correct details when compared to experiencing a single stressful event
- The findings also show that there is no difference in the number of incorrect details reported (internal intrusion and external intrusion errors) when experiencing either a predated or single stressful event
- However, regardless of event stress, repeated event participants are still more likely to make internal intrusion errors than single event participants
Understanding court processes
• What fears do you think the child would feel?
- Speaking in front of others
- Making a mistake
- Punishment for mistakes
- Retaliation (increased from 7-13 years)
- Having to see defendant
• Comprehension
- Need to prove own innocence
- Likelihood of jail for witness
- Role of witness
- Need to tell truth
• Cognitive and emotional responses are interlinked
• Helping children understand what to expect
- Interactive court room diagram
- Website of justice and attorney general
- Older children: cartoon version of the charter of victim’s rights
• Screens and cctv
- Evidence in chief by way of a pre-recorded interview; if one was completed by the police
- Ask questions via cctv
- Screening the defendant from the child
Understanding truth and lies
• NSW oaths act (1990): a child’s evidence can be accepted without taking the oath if:
1. Told important to tell the truth
2. Declares will not lie
• What is a lie?
- Factuality
- Belief of speaker
- Intent of speaker
• Piaget
- ‘naughtiness’ of lies judge by consequences, not intention, till 8-10 years
• More recent research:
- Pre-schoolers can judge by intention is salient BUT evaluation of goodness/naughtiness of truth vs lies is till shaky
Can children be encouraged to tell the truth?
• NSW oath acts (1990): a child’s evidence can be accepted without taking the oath if
- Child is told important to tell truth
- Child declares will not lie
• Lyon et al (2008) child development, 79, 914-929
- Children (4-7 years) coached by adult to
a. Deny playing with the doll house
b. Falsely report playing
- When instructed to lie they were less likely to lie (false report) – especially in young children. reassurance helpful
• Police card for interviewing children
- These exercises are implemented with police and court to try and help them tell the truth
- Police continue with interview even if they don’t understand truth because the court will establish that
From the equality before the law bench book NSW
• Competence to give unsworn evidence is presumed if the child is told:
- It is important to tell the truth – child states that they will do so - Someone might ask questions you don’t know the answer to, if so, it’s okay to say I don’t know - You shouldn’t feel pressure to agree with suggestions that aren’t true (say if you don’t agree with something: say ‘that isn’t right)
Understanding legal and general language
• What develops? a. Vocabulary b. Grammar c. Use of language in social contexts - Both receptive and expressive language - Gradual acquisitions across primary school years of concepts of and vocabulary for: Number Distance Weight Time Height - These concepts are very important in pressing charges, but young children don’t always have them
Vocabulary for relevant concepts
• Body parts: families often have idiosyncratic terms for ‘private’ body parts
• Relational terms: before, after, yesterday, tomorrow, earlier, later
• Words of the days of the week, months, seasons
• Receptive language: can children monitor their understanding of adult’s questions?
• Comprehension monitoring involves:
- Identifying the problem
- Selecting appropriate strategy
- Social emotional skills
Saywitz 1995
• Even if they realize they don’t understand, young children may be reluctant to say ;I don’t know/ I don’t understand’
• He trained 6 to 8 years old to:
- Monitor comprehension
- Signal lack of comprehension
- E.g. what are the markers that were given to the class to use to decorate the scarves for your dance costume?
• three groups
1. no intervention
2. ‘tell me if you don’t understand’
3. Comprehension monitoring strategy training
• Instructed children:
- Indicated lack of comprehension more
- Asked for rephrasing more
Memory ability – memory experiment
• Memories aren’t exact reproductions of experience: they are constructed at storage and reconstructed at retrieval
• ‘memory elaborates, deletes and shapes its content, at encoding, storage and retrieval’
• Poor memory and free recall in children
- More disorganised storage
Developing scripts – general ideas we have about specific events
Children don’t always have many scripts
- More rapid decay
Cause brains are still developing
- Poor retrieval strategies
Kids don’t have very good strategies
- Selective retrieval
- Knowledge limitations
Prompting children’s memory
• Free recall
- ‘tell me everything you can remember about the time when’
- Minimal information and few errors
• Specific questions
- ‘what colour hair did he have?’
- Maximal information BUT many errors
• The trouble with specific questions
- Specific questions: yes or no forced choice (multiple choice) questions are particularly prone to errors
Children limited free recall
• Do anatomical dolls help?
• Not with free recall
- Very small increase in correct reports of genital touch BUT NO false reports of genital touch
• Helpful with specific questions
- 92% correctly reported genital touch
- BUT 8% incorrectly reported genital touch
Did anatomical dolls help ‘disclosure’?
- Moreover specific questions with dolls generated more errors about other aspects of the examination
- The problem may be worse with younger children
- 3 year old’s reporting on a medical examination using anatomical dolls
- No genital examination: 50% false reports
- Genital examination: 47% correct reports
- Younger children may be encouraged to give false reports by anatomical dolls
Social and emotional development
• Children may not recall BUT guess: - Perceived expectations - Failure to comprehend reason for questions • Children may recall info BUT fail to report - Embarrassment - Pressure not to disclose • Reluctance to disclose - Lack of knowledge re-appropriate adult behaviour - Threats - Self-blame, embarrassment - ‘it won’t make any difference’ - Perceived supportive context - Language, cognitive competence
Reluctance to say I don’t know
• Children’s reluctant to say, ‘I don’t understand what you are asking” “ could you please say that in a different way?”
• Asking children bizarre questions
- E.g.is milk bigger than water?
• Most 5 and 7 year old’s attempted a response
• Older children more likely to qualify their answer (‘it might be because’)
• Are children misinterpreting the adults expectations/conversational rules?
What makes children suggestible?
• We are all vulnerable to accepting incorrect information/suggestions that we encounter!
• But in general, suggestibility decreases with age
• What makes children suggestible?
- Poorer memory
- Explicit by adult questioners
- Source monitoring ability
- ‘contamination’ but adult questioner’s preconceptions
- Simple compliance
Definition of deception
• A successful or unsuccessful deliberate attempt, without forewarning, to create in another a belief which the communicator considers to be untrue
Types of lies
• Outright lies
- Completely contradictory to the truth
• Exaggerations
- Embellishes the truth
• Subtle lies
- Literal truths that are designed to mislead
Reasons to lie
• 5 reasons
1. To gain personal advantage
2. To avoid punishment
3. To make a positive impression on others
4. To protect themselves from embarrassment/disapproval
5. For the sake of social relationships
• Self-orientated vs other orientated
Frequency of lying
• Usually around the age of 2 years old is the first lie – lie of denial
• American diary study: uni students told 2 lies/day and community members told 1 lie/day. Most lies were self-serving
• Frequency of lying depends on:
1. The personality and gender of the liar
2. The situation in which the lie is told
3. The people to whom the lie is told
• The gender and personality of the liar
- Extroverts lie more than introverts
- Frequency of lies similar between men and women
- Women tell more social lies
- When dating, women lie to improve physical appearance, men lie to exaggerate earning potential
• The situation in which the lie is told
- 90% lie to prospective date
- 83% lie to get a job
• People to whom the lie is told
- Lowest rate of lying with spouses (1/10 interactions – mostly subtle)
- Highest rate of lying with strangers
- University students lie frequently to their mothers (almost 50% of conversations)
Three ways to catch a liar
- Observe their verbal and non-verbal behaviour
- Analyse the content of what they say
- Examine their physiological responses
Behavioural indicators of deception
• Some verbal and non-verbal cues are more likely to occur during deception than others, depending on:
1. Emotion
2. Content complexity
3. Attempted behavioural control
• Paul Ekman’s emotional approach
- Deception results in different emotions: guilt, fear, excitement (duping delight)
- Strength of emotion depends on personality of liar and circumstances of lie
- Emotions may influence the liar’s NVB
• Content complexity: lying can be difficult to do
- People engaged in cognitively complex tasks exhibit different non-verbal behaviours
- More speech fillers and errors, longer pauses and move our limbs less
- Can’t tell lie back to front
- Difficult to make eye contact
• Liars may attempt to control their behaviour in order to avoid getting caught
- When liars do this, they sometimes overcontrol themselves, resulting in behaviour that looks rehearsed and rigid, and speech that sounds too smooth
- Non-verbal behaviour is more difficult to control than verbal behaviour
• Micro expressions: a fleeting facial expression discordant with the expressed emotion and usually suppressed within 1/5 to 1/25 of a second
• It is difficult to control facial communication and it can betray a deceiver’s true emotion to a trained observer
• Inconsistent emotional leakage occurred in 100% of participants at least once. Negative emotions were more difficult to falsify than happiness
Behavioural indicators of deception: verbal and non-verbal cues to lying
• Verbal cues - Higher pitch of voice - Increased response latency - Increased errors in speech - Shorter length of description • Non-verbal cues - Decreased nodding - Decreased foot and leg movement - Decreased hand movements
Behavioural indictors of deception
- Liars do not seem to show signs of nervousness such as gaze aversion and fidgeting
- Professional lie detectors ability to accurately classify truth and lies is about 55%
- Analyses of non-verbal behaviour are not accepted as evidence in criminal courts
Content indicators of deception - Statement validity assessment (SVA)
• Developed in Germany to determine the credibility of child witnesses’ testimonies in trials for sexual offences
• Extended to adults and other types of cases
• SVA accepted in other European courts, but not UK courts. Opinion in US is divided
• Has been presented in expert testimony in US but main role in guiding police investigations and decisions of prosecutors
• Consists of three major elements:
1. Semi-structured interview
2. Criteria-based content analysis (CBCA) of transcribed version of statement given during the interview
3. Evaluation of the CBCA outcome via a set of questions (validity check list)
CBCA: the content analysis
• Based on the ‘undeutsch hypothesis’:
- A statement derived from memory of an actual experience differs in content and quality from a statement based on invention and fantasy
• Trained evaluators judge the presence or absence (or strength) of 19 criteria – the higher the score the more likely it is true
• The presence of each criterion strengthens the hypothesis that the account is based on genuine experience
Why are these criteria absent? - CBCA
- Lack of imagination in inviting relevant characteristics
- Do not realise judgements based on these characteristics, so don’t include them
- Lack knowledge to incorporate certain criteria
- Difficult to incorporate some criteria
- Wary of including details in case they forget
- Wary of including details that can be checked
- Wary of including certain characteristics in case their stories sound less credible
Validity check list
• Finally, to standardise CBCA findings, evaluators consider alternative interpretations:
- Psychological characteristics (age, verbal and social skills)
- Interview characterises (types of questioning)
- Motivation to report
- Investigative questions (consistency with other evidence)
Does SVA work?
• Reviewed 37 experimental and field studies on CBCA:
• Filed studies:
- Statements made by persons in actual cases of alleged sexual abuse
- Clear forensic relevance, but difficult to establish ground truth
• Experimental studies
- Statement of participants who lied or told the truth for the experiment
- Easy to establish veracity of statement, but differ from real-life situations
• Criterion 3 received the most support: in 80% of studies truth tellers included more details
• Criteria 4 and 6 also received strong support: in 69% of studies truth tellers included more contextual embedding and reproductions of conversation
• Cognitive criteria (1-13) received more support than motivational criteria (14-18)
• In 92% of experimental studies, truth tellers received higher CBCA scores than liars
• Trained evaluators often achieve above chance classifications
• For experimental studies, reported:
- Overall accuracy of 55%-90%
- Accuracy for truths of 53%-91%
- Accuracy for lies of 35%-100%
• Truth bias: CBCA is ‘truth verifying method’ not ‘lie-detection technique’
• The absence of criteria does not necessarily mean the statement is fabricated
Some concerns about SVA
- No formal decision rules, profiles for truth or deception, or cut points
- Criteria should be given different eight
- Different types of lies (from subtle to outright) may yield different levels/kinds of characteristics
- SVA assessments are subjective and inter-rater reliability can be low, even after extensive training
- CBCA assessments of written statements are time-consuming and even training may not improve accuracy
A whole approach to detecting deception
• Cues to deception
- Liars are less forthcoming
- Liars tell less compelling tales
- Liars are less positive and pleasant
- Liars are more tense
- Liars include fewer ordinary imperfections and unusual details
• However, many behaviours showed to discern ale links, or only weak links, to deception
• Also, no clear cut-off points or profile for lies and liars
Difficulties in detection of deception
- Lie detection is difficult and there is no give-away cue
- Orthello error: truth tellers may show similar behaviour to liars because they, too, may experience emotions, may have to think hard, or may have to control themselves
- Adequate comparisons between truth-telling and lie-telling are not made (e.g. small talk vs interrogation)
- Observers seem to have incorrect beliefs about how liars behave and people, including police officers, are taught wrong cues
- Liars can use counter-measures (e.g. can train themselves to beat techniques)
- Deception research is often conducted in university labs and the stakes aren’t high enough. It’s hard to establish ground truth in field studies
- The Brokaw hazard: individual differences in emotional expression, vocal and body movement characteristics
- Individual difference in ability to control: some people are ‘natural liars’, or have trained themselves to be very effective liars
- Cultural differences in non-verbal behaviour
Perceived credibility and age
- In contexts where there is a focus upon the memory of the eyewitness, older children and adults tend to be perceived as more credible than younger children (e.g. eyewitness to a robbery)
- In contexts where witness veracity is salient, younger children tend to be perceived as more credible than older children and adults (e.g. sexual abuse allegations)
Why are we bad at assessing eyewitness accuracy?
• Want jury to be sensitive to the factors that affect eyewitness memory and not sensitive to factors that don’t
• Knowledge + integration
1. Jurors lack knowledge
2. = Jurors also exhibit difficulty integrating knowledge
Why eyewitness memory is ‘common sense’ right?
• If experts aren’t providing information that people don’t know then they are not required
• Surveys
- 11 jurors, 30 judges, 52 law enforcement personnel
- Compared with eyewitness experts’ responses in an earlier survey
- 30 statements about eyewitness issues
- 3 response options (generally false, I don’t know, generally true)
• Results
- Jurors and experts only agreed on 4/30 items (i.e. 26/30 or 87% disagreement)
- Judges and experts agreed on 12/30 items (i.e. 60% disagreement)
- Law enforcement professionals and experts agreed on 12/30 items (i.e. 60% disagreement)
- The findings that people have deficits in their understanding of eyewitness issues, is well replicated including Australian samples
• Problems with survey methodology
- But there seems to be little correspondence between survey responses and behaviours
So what factors do influence perceived credibility?
- Consistency
- Confidence
- Application: repeated events witnesses
Consistency
- considered a hallmark of witness credibility
* types of inconsistences: omissions, contradictions, additions/reminiscence
Powell, westera, goodman-delahunty and pichler 2016
• analysed the transcripts of evidence given by 63 complainants of CSA (NSW, VIC, WA)
• efforts to highlight inconsistences and their importance in the case was coded
- coded information as central to the case or peripheral to the case (minor factor that doesn’t really matter)
• defence lawyers raised inconsistencies that were central in 72.4% of complaints, and inconsistences that were peripheral in 98.4%
• contradictions (98.4%), addition (50.4%), omission (29.3%)
• defence lawyers were more likely to target inconsistences when the quality of the police interview was low, and when more questions were asked
Jury simulation experiments and consistency
• participants watched a videotaped trial – all watched the same trial with one trivial difference (consistent, novel information, contradiction, on the stand contradiction) all of the information given was peripheral information (was the perpetrator wearing jewellery)
• as conviction rates lower it shows less weight being given tot eh eyewitness testimony
• conviction rate (main effect of consistency)
- perceived credibility: consistent > novel > contradictory witness (any type)
the accuracy of inconsistent details
• why may it be problematic to use inconsistencies to discredit an entire testimony?
- Inconsistencies (especially contradictions) are much more indicative of memory accuracy at the level of the inconsistent detail
- The correlations between the presence of contradictions and the overall accuracy of a statement are low
• Independence of components
- All aspects are processed independently – if someone had a beard is processed to if they had a weapon
• Retrieval process
- Different retrieval processes, differently asked questions
• Dissociations: common versus unique mental processes
- Aren’t the same process, some variables still effect outcomes differently
Consistency and veracity
• Liars may be even more consistent with themselves, and with others… why?
- Rehearsal
- Different retrieval strategies: repeat vs reconstruct hypothesis
- BUT… unanticipated questions… not good at responding
Confidence
• Poor indicator of eyewitness memory when the confidence is at trial, confidence at the time of the event is a good sign
• Eyewitness confidence tends to exert large effects upon jurors’ decisions about a case and perceptions of witness credibility
• The problem of relying upon eyewitness confidence at trial: confidence inflation
- Post-identification feedback
- Co- witness discussion
- Repeated questioning
- Trial preparation procedures
Confidence… inflation
• Participants were there under false pretences, a theft occurred (which they thought was real)
- They were asked to see what participant they saw commit the crime
- Everyone chose an inaccurate thief
• They were then told that their partner either gave no feedback, identified the same persona as you or identified someone different
• They were all then interviewed by campus police
• The self-confidence was significantly higher if they were told that the partner chose the same person than if the other person hadn’t given feedback. If they were told the partner identified someone different their self-confidence was significantly lower than if they were told they identified the same person or no response
• There was then a second bunch of participants that were exposed to a video of a witness that was given no feedback, same feedback or different feedback – they then gave their perception of credibility
- Perceived accuracy is significantly higher when the same person was identified than no feedback, and it was significantly higher with no feedback than those who got different feedback
Credibility and repeated events witnesses
• Repeated events tend to be:
- Inconsistent
- Have low levels of confidence in their memory
- Tend to provide accounts with low levels of details
- One group had single event
- One group had repeated single events
- One group had a group of liars – asked to fabricate a convincing story
- One week later participants were interviewed
- New bunch of participants watched recorded interview and commented on credibility
- Single events was more highly believed than repeated events
- Liars were seen as more credible than repeated events
• Main findings
- Perceived credibility
Repeated events < single event witnesses
Repeated events < liars
- Perceived honesty
Repeated events witnesses < single event witnesses
Repeated events < liars
- Perceived cognitive competence
Repeated events < liars
Explanations for unethical behaviour
• Shift away from ‘bad apples’ view
• System supports corruption via:
- One-the-job socialisation of recruits
- Peer group reinforcement and encouragement of rule violations
- Policing as a ‘brotherhood’
- Demands of ‘results-style policing’ compromise due process
- Much police work is unsupervised and discretionary
Study 1: perceptions of ethical dilemmas
• Purpose: to investigate attitudes towards breaches of ethics among police officers and recruits
• Participants: 683 participants (530 males, 129 male); recruits to commissioned officers; from QLD, NSW, VIC, TAS, WA, SA, Australian police staff college
• Method:
- Read 20 scenarios describing unethical behaviours
- Rated how serious each violations was for:
1. Typical working officer
2. Typical instructor
3. The department
4. Personal view
• Rated each scenario from ‘0’ not at all serious to ‘10’ extremely serious
• E.g. of a scenario
- Average was 5.1
- Average was 8
• Main findings
1. Typical officers rated situations as least serious, followed by personal views, then instructor, then department
2. On almost all incidents, recruits rated most serious, constables/senior constables/sergeants as least serious; senior sergeants and commissioned officers midway
3. Females gave more serious judgements of incidents, viewing the typical officer and instructor as less scrupulous than themselves
Study 2: individual perspectives on police ethics
• Purpose: to investigate individual officers’ training, knowledge and understanding of ethics in everyday policing situations
• Participants: 32 participants (26 males, 6 females) ; recruits to superintendents; exposure to ethics from 11 weeks to 30 years
• Method: detailed, semi-structured interview
• Findings and implications:
- Junior officers reported receiving more ethics training than senior officers, although training was not viewed as relevant or practical
- Rules and regulations need to be written in a way that is easier to understand
- Temptations: opportunity and financial for senior officers, emotional and peer pressure for junior officers
- Resisting temptation: getting caught and being punished for senior officers, personal integrity for junior officers
- Getting caught: not smart enough, by outside bodies not your mates
- Improving ethical behaviour: training, organisational change, supervision
Study 3: practical ethics in the police service
• Purpose: to investigate individual and organisational influences on ethical and unethical behaviour among police officers
• Participants: 4655 participants from NSW, QLD, SA; 91% male, M age 37 years; exposure to ethics from 11 weeks to 30 years
• Method: survey study
• Findings and implications
- Estimated that 13-28% of police acts involve breaches of ethics
- Recommendations from survey:
Improve work conditions; reduce stress and increase pay
Improve selection (although recruits more ethical)
Make ethics raining more practical
Improve supervision
Reward those who is play ethical behaviour
React less stridently to minor breaches (tolerate error)
- Need individual and organisational change
Study 4: public perception
- Public perceptions of police (compared to other professionals) improved from 1995 to 1999
- Pattern of complaints may have changed
- Police are seen as one of the most ethical procedures
Police discretion
• Police discretion: the freedom that a police officer often has for deciding what should be done in any given situation
• Those who support the use of discretion argue that laws cannot take into account all the situations police officers will encounter
• Discretion is commonly used for:
1. Youth crime
2. Offenders with mental illness
3. Domestic violence
4. Use of force
Youth crime
- Discretion is encouraged with youth
- 30-40% currently handled informally
- Belief that formal sanctions are not the most effective response
- Responses include community referrals, resolution conferences, and arrests
Offenders with mental illness
- Encounters with the police more common since deinstitutionalisation
- Responses include informal resolution, escort to psychiatric facility (12%), or arrest (16%)
- Problems with institutions leads to frequent use of informal resolution and jail
- Often results in criminalisation
Domestic violence
- Historically, domestic violence was often ignored by police
- Recent changes in policy encouraging arrest
- Discretion is still important
- Responses include separation, community referral and arrests
Factors influencing arrest decisions
- Seriousness of crime
- Strength of the evidence
- Whether victim supports arrest
- Relationship between victim and offender
- Degree of suspect resistance
- Race, gender, neighbourhood
Sources of police stress
• Occupational stressors:
- E.g. having to use a weapon
• Organisational stressors:
- E.g. paperwork
• Criminal justice stressors:
- E.g. frustration with court system
• Public stressors
- E.g. uncooperative witnessesConsequences of police stress
- Physical
- Psychological and personal
- Job related
Physical consequences of stress
- Police officers may be at an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease and digestive disorders
- High blood pressure, ulcers, weight gain, and diabetes are other ailments they may develop
- Police officers die younger than other city employees
- It is hard distinguish if the causes are stressors or lifestyle
Psychological and personal consequences of stress
• While some research indicates the following problems are especially problematic for police officers, other studies do not:
- Drinking and substance abuse
- Depression, anxiety
- Violence
- Marital problems? Suicide?
Job-related consequences of stress
- Consequences include poor morale, absenteeism, reduction in effectiveness, turnover, and early retirement
- These problems may result from physical, psychological or personal consequences of stress
Preventing and managing police stress
• Many programs are in place to prevent and manage police stress. These include:
- Physical fitness programs - Professional counselling services - Family assistance programs - Resiliency training - Critical incident debriefings
Resiliency training
• Resiliency training: training to improve ability to effectively adapt to stress and adversity. Typically includes:
- Education about psychological and physiological symptoms of stress
- Techniques to manage stress
• Resiliency training can improve job performance, health, and officer well-being
Critical incident debriefing
• One of the most commonly used methods of debriefing is critical incident stress debriefing
• CISD is a group debriefing procedure in which members discuss the traumatic event in a controlled and rational environment
• There are many positive aspects of CISD
• However:
- Some research has shown that ICSD shows not positive effects on PTSD levels
- Some research has even shown that CISD may have a negative effect on psychological wellbeing
- Research on civilian witnesses suggests that people report misinformation that is mentioned during psychological debriefing
The contradiction
• While the legal system incorporates procedures designed to reduce or prevent civilian co-witnesses from discussing an incident with each other, post-incident debriefing, a standard procedure within the emergency services, is designed to actively promote co-witness discussion
Problematic stages of CISD?
• Since there are many good aspects of CISD, we don’t want to through the baby out with the bathwater!
• Stages:
- Introduction
- Facts
- Thoughts
- Reaction
- Symptoms
- Teaching
- Re-entry
• Fact phase: where participants each describe their memories of the event witnessed
- Hypothesis: discussing facts may lead to memory conformity
• Reaction phase: where participants discuss their emotions as they remember experiencing them during the height of the trauma
- Hypothesis: discussion emotions may have a negative effect on psychological wellbeing
Study
• Purpose: to determine the impact of two stages of CISD on psychological wellbeing and recall of the event
• Participants: 74 undergraduate psychology students (42 females, 32 males)
• Procedure:
1. Stimuli: autopsy video (two versions)
2. 1st delay: 5 minutes
3. Debriefing conditions
a. Emotion-focused debriefing
b. Fact-focused debriefing
c. No debriefing
4. Individual questionnaires
a. Memory: free recall
b. Psychological reactions: impact of event scale (IES)
Who are the victims of crime?
• Victims: people who have suffers harm, including physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, economic loss or substantial impairment of their fundamental rights, through acts or emissions that are in violation of criminal laws
• According to the British crime survey, high victimisation rates are found among:
- Urban areas ( 18% compared to 12% rural)
- Property offences: young professionals
- Personal victimisation: age (16-24): single, low household income, unemployed, full time student, active evening life, high alcohol consumption
Victims fear of crime
• Groups at highest risk of becoming crime victims are not necessarily those who experience the greatest fear of crime
- Elderly and women report highest fear
- Young males report least fear
• Although people most fear violent victimisation from strangers, many crimes are committed by non-strangers
Victims fear of crime in Australia
• National survey of community satisfaction with policing:
- 80% of Australians surveyed felt safe at home by themselves during the night
- Only 40% felt safe or very safe outside during the night
• Most feared public activity: catching the train
Victims fear of crime
• How do people manage their fear of crime?
- Increase security measures at home - In public try to avoid ‘unpredictable strangers’ - Go out in groups - Monitor environment/stay alert
Reporting crime
• Crime statistics often reflect reported crimes, but many crimes go unreported
• Estimates that only 3/5 crimes in US reported by victims
• Factors that influence reporting:
- Nature of offence (*perception that reporting will benefit victim, seriousness)
- Bystanders/support networks who encourage reporting
- Characteristics of victim are less important
Historical views of victims
- Early middle ages: victims or their survivors played a central role in trial proceedings and sentencing
- This ‘golden age’ of the victim ended with monarchs who declared that vengeance was theirs alone
- Crimes are often thought of as hostile acts against the state, rather than the events that hurt a specific person
- Until recently, victims have had few rights in the criminal justice system
- 1960s-1970s: criticisms that the government offered the victims little to no support, even though ostensibly the criminal justice system was established to serve them
- 1970’s: concept of ‘blaming the victim’ recognised and popularised
Why do we blame the victim?
• The fundamental attribution error: the tendency for observers, when analysing another’s behaviour, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition
• Just-world hypothesis: the need to believe the world is fair and that people get what they deserve
- Bad people are punished
- Good people are rewarded
• Blaming victim shapes our responses to victims:
- The norms of our society demand that we help others that deserve our help. But if people are responsible for their own suffering, we do not feel obligated to help them
Secondary victimisation
- Primary victimisation the crime itself, secondary victimisation is the aftermath of the crime
- Uncertainty as their rile in the criminal justice process
- A general lack of knowledge about the criminal justice system, courtroom procedures, and legal issues
- Trial delays that result in frequent travel, missed work and wasted time
- Fear of the defendant or of realisation from defendant’s associates
- Trauma of testifying and cross-examination
- Media – especially in homicide cases
Response to victim’s concerns
• Several developments reflect the growing stature and influence of victim’s rights movement:
- UN declaration of basic principles of justice for victims of crime and abuse of power
- The emergence of the interdisciplinary field of victimology, which concentrates on the process and consequences of victimisation experiences and how victims recover
• Increasingly, legislators, prosecutors and court systems are trying to respond to the concerns of crime victims by:
1. Compensation of the crime victims
2. Participation by victims in criminal proceedings
3. Legislative changes protecting victim’s rights
4. Reconciling victims and offenders
Compensation of the crime victims
• Restitution: judge orders defendant to compensate victim for losses
• Pros:
- Victim reimbursed
- Helps offenders appreciate how their crimes have hurt others
• Cons:
- Often there is no defendant because crime isn’t solved, or guilty person is acquitted
- Defendant is often financially unable to reimburse the victim
- Can’t put a numerical value on the loss and trauma experienced
• Government often has victim compensation funds to pay for lost wages and medical expenses
• These funds usually do not cover property losses and have fairly low caps on how much compensation will be provided
Participation by victims in crime proceedings
- Many states in Australia provide that victims have a right to be notified of and attend court proceedings and a right to make their views known, either to the prosecutor or directly to the judge
- Victims are concerned that important decisions are made without their input and knowledge
- Victim impact evidence: evidence offered at sentencing to show the impact on the victim of the crime for which the defendant has been convicted
- Senator Brooks Douglass wrote a law that gave him and his sister the right to watch the state execute Steven Hatch, the man who attacked him and his sister and murdered their parents
Legislative changes protecting victim’s rights
• Many states have passed special laws to protect victims’ rights/ for example:
- To be notified of proceedings - Not to excluded from the trial and other proceedings - To be heard at crucial stages such as the release of an offender, plea bargaining, and sentencing - To be notified of offender’s release from custody - To be freed from unreasonable delay in the proceedings - To receive restitution from the convicted offender
Reconciling victims and offenders
• E.g. restorative justice
• Resolution conferences although controversial, can cause the offender to realise the victim’s pain and the victim to understand why the offender committed the crime
• Provides benefits in the areas of:
- Accountability – have to face the people they have hurt
- Competency development – should develop empathy, better communication skills and learn conflict resolution skills
- Community safety – how they can repair the harm they have done, victims can ask ‘why me’ stop them from being so scared, closure
• NSW: victim offender conferencing
- Organised by the restorative justice unit
- Only takes place is the offender accepts responsibility for the offence and both the victim and the offender have agreed to take part
- All the participants discuss the crime and the impact that this has had on their lives. They then come to an agreement about what could be done to make things better
Psychological effects of victimisation
• Stockholm syndrome: paradoxical phenomenon where hostages exhibit empathy and positive regard for their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them
• Named after a bank robbery in Stockholm, where bank employees were held hostage for 6 days in 1973. The victims became emotionally attached to their captors, and even defended them after they were freed
• Victims can be at risk of developing acute stress disorder (ASD; before 1 month) and later PTSD
• Usually the trauma must be of sufficient severity to have threatened the victim, or someone close to the victim, with mortal danger or serious bodily harm
• How common is PTSD in Australia?
- Around 12% of Australians will experience PTSD in their lifetime
- Serious accidents are one of the leading causes of PTSD in Australia
• How are crime and PTSD related?
- 26% of women whose trauma was crime related developed PTSD
- Only 9% of non-criminal trauma victims developed PTSD
Why do only some develop PTSD?
• Although many people experiencing severe trauma may develop ASD, most do not develop PTSD
• People are at greater risk of PTSD if they have:
- A past history of trauma or previous mental illness
- Experienced an event involving deliberate harm
- Had repeated traumatic experiences
- Ongoing stressful life events after the trauma
- An absence of social support
• Cognitive biases
- PTSD sufferers often perceive the world as a dangerous place
- They blame themselves for the event
- They often come to view themselves as helpless to deal with stressors
• If these misconceptions can be eliminated, PTSD may be prevented
Psychological help for victims
• Foa et al (1995) have developed a 4 session prevention course to attack these misconceptions:
- Education about common psychological reactions so victims know their responses are normal
- Training in skills such as relaxation so they are prepared to cope with stress
- Emotionally reliving the trauma through imaginal exposure methods to allow victims to diffuse fears of the trauma
- Cognitive restructuring to help the women replace negative beliefs about their competence and adequacy with more realistic appraisals
- 10 women who had recently been raped or assaulted completed the course and were compared with 10 other similar women who did not compete the course
- At 2 month and 5.5. month post-assault assessments, victims who completed the course had fewer PTSD symptoms
- Two months after the trauma, 70% of untreated women and only 10% of treated women had PTSD
Victims vs survivors
- Many prefer the term ‘survivors’ over ‘victims’
- Traditionally psychology and related disciplines have emphasised destructive consequences of negative events
- More recently, researchers have started balancing this one-sided perspective with growing interest in coping and resilience
