MOCK JUROR RATINGS OF GUILT IN CANADA: MODERN RACISM AND ETHNIC HERITAGE

2003 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey E. Pfeifer ◽  
James R. P. Ogloff
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Modern Racism ◽  
Native Canadian ◽  
Judicial Instructions ◽  
Legal Standard ◽  
Jury Instructions ◽  
Bipolar Scale ◽  
Prejudicial Attitudes ◽  
English Canadian

This research investigated whether the prejudicial attitudes of mock jurors in Canada produce criminal sanction disparities similar to those reported by research in the United States. In order to investigate this hypothesis, English Canadian participants read a transcript of a sexual assault trial that varied the ethnic background of both the victim and the defendant (i.e., English, French or Native Canadian). Participants were then asked to rate the guilt of the defendant in two ways: (1) on a 7-point bipolar scale in accordance with their personal beliefs (i.e., Subjective Guilt Rating), and (2) on a dichotomous scale (guilty/not guilty) in accor- dance with judicial instructions (i.e., Legal Standard Guilt Rating). Participants were also asked to rate the victim and defendant on a number of personality traits. Results indicate that participants asked to rate the degree of guilt of the defendant according to the Subjective Guilt Rating found him more guilty if he was French, or Native Canadian as opposed to English Canadian. These prejudicial ratings, however, dissipated when participants were asked to rate the guilt of the defendant according to the Legal Standard Guilt Rating that included jury instructions. This apparent paradox in results is discussed in terms of modern racism theory.

The Worst of All Worlds

2005 ◽  
Vol 1902 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Eidlin
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Population Density ◽  
Travel Behavior ◽  
Traffic Congestion ◽  
Population Distribution ◽  
Housing Prices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Gini Coefficients

Los Angeles, California, is generally considered the archetypal sprawling metropolis. Yet traditional measures equate sprawl with low population density, and Los Angeles is among the densest and thereby the least sprawling cities in the United States. How can this apparent paradox be explained? This paper argues that the answer lies in the fact that Los Angeles exhibits a comparatively even distribution of population throughout its urbanized area. As a result, the city suffers from many consequences of high population density, including extreme traffic congestion, poor air quality, and high housing prices, while offering its residents few benefits that typically accompany this density, including fast and effective public transit, vibrant street life, and tightly knit urban neighborhoods. The city's unique combination of high average population density with little differentiation in the distribution of population might best be characterized as dense sprawl, a condition that embodies the worst of urban and suburban worlds. This paper uses Gini coefficients to illustrate variation in population density and then considers a number of indicators–-most relating either to the provision of transportation infrastructure or to travel behavior–-that demonstrate the effects of low-variation population distribution on the quality of urban life in Los Angeles. This approach offers researchers, practitioners, and policy makers in Los Angeles and in smaller cities that are evolving in similar ways a useful and user-friendly tool for identifying, explaining, measuring, and addressing the most problematic aspects of sprawl.

scholarly journals Biased hate crime perceptions can reveal supremacist sympathies

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (32) ◽  
pp. 19072-19079
Author(s):  
N. Pontus Leander ◽  
Jannis Kreienkamp ◽  
Maximilian Agostini ◽  
Wolfgang Stroebe ◽  
Ernestine H. Gordijn ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Hate Crime ◽  
El Paso ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hate Crimes ◽  
Mass Shootings ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
Crime Perceptions ◽  
Prejudicial Attitudes

People may be sympathetic to violent extremism when it serves their own interests. Such support may manifest itself via biased recognition of hate crimes. Psychological surveys were conducted in the wakes of mass shootings in the United States, New Zealand, and the Netherlands (totaln= 2,332), to test whether factors that typically predict endorsement of violent extremism also predict biased hate crime perceptions. Path analyses indicated a consistent pattern of motivated judgment: hate crime perceptions were directly biased by prejudicial attitudes and indirectly biased by an aggrieved sense of disempowerment and White/Christian nationalism. After the shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, disempowerment-fueled anti-Semitism predicted lower perceptions that the gunman was motivated by hatred and prejudice (study 1). After the shootings that occurred at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, disempowerment-fueled Islamoprejudice similarly predicted lower hate crime perceptions (study 2a). Conversely, after the tram shooting in Utrecht, Netherlands (which was perpetrated by a Turkish-born immigrant), disempowerment-fueled Islamoprejudice predicted higher hate crime perceptions (study 2b). Finally, after the Walmart shooting in El Paso, Texas, hate crime perceptions were specifically biased by an ethnonationalist view of Hispanic immigrants as a symbolic (rather than realistic) threat to America; that is, disempowered individuals deemphasized likely hate crimes due to symbolic concerns about cultural supremacy rather than material concerns about jobs or crime (study 3). Altogether, biased hate crime perceptions can be purposive and reveal supremacist sympathies.

Measuring Whiteness: A Systematic Review of Instruments and Call to Action

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 530-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. C. Schooley ◽  
Debbiesiu L. Lee ◽  
Lisa B. Spanierman
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Black People ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Psychological Study ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
Modern Racism

The psychological study of Whiteness provides one avenue for researchers to help combat racial injustice in the United States. This article is a call to action for counseling psychologists to engage in much needed scholarship and critical examinations of Whiteness. In this systematic review and content analysis, we provide an overview of 18 quantitative measures focusing on various aspects of Whiteness published between 1967 and 2017. We summarize the constructs and psychometric properties of these measures. Our content analysis indicated that constructs assessed by Whiteness measures have shifted in focus over time across four themes: (a) Attitudes Toward Black People/Integration, (b) Modern Racism, (c) White Racial Identity, and (d) White Privilege and Antiracism. We conclude with suggestions on how advancement, development, and use of Whiteness measures could further our knowledge through research examining present-day racial justice issues. The issues highlighted include police brutality, xenophobia, immigration, White supremacy, activism, and training in the field.

scholarly journals Infectious Disease Prevalence, Not Race Exposure, Predicts Both Implicit and Explicit Racial Prejudice Across the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian A. O’Shea ◽  
Derrick G. Watson ◽  
Gordon D. A. Brown ◽  
Corey L. Fincher
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
United States ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Disease Rates ◽  
Prejudicial Attitudes ◽  
Implicit And Explicit

What factors increase racial prejudice? Across the United States, increased exposure to Black Americans has been hypothesized to increase White Americans’ prejudicial attitudes toward Black Americans. Here we test an alternative explanation: People living in regions with higher infectious disease rates have a greater tendency to avoid out-groups because such avoidance reduces their perceived likelihood of contracting illnesses. Consistent with this parasite-stress hypothesis, we show that both White and Black individuals ( N > 77,000) living in U.S. states in which disease rates are higher display increased implicit (automatic) and explicit (conscious) racial prejudice. These results survived the inclusion of several individual- and state-level controls previously used to explain variability in prejudice. Furthermore, showing disease-related primes to White individuals with strong germ aversion increased their explicit, but not implicit, anti-Black/pro-White prejudice. Domestic out-groups, not just foreigners, may therefore experience increased overt forms of prejudice when disease rates are high.

Benign Discrimination and the Right to Equality

1974 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Evans
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Preferential Treatment ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Formal Expression ◽  
Gareth Evans ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right

Governments have been increasingly preoccupied with the task of reconciling claims to preferential treatment with the principle of equality. The social and philosophical issues raised by this apparent paradox are considered, and the compatibility of benign discrimination with the concept of equality demonstrated by developing a complex normative notion of equality. An analysis is then undertaken of the various attempts made by lawyers, in nearly one hundred existing bills of rights, to give formal expression to these principles. Ultimately the problem of benign discrimination falls for resolution by the courts, and the jurisprudence developed in this respect by the Supreme Courts of Canada and the United States is critically discussed and compared. Having exhaustively developed an appreciation of world experience regarding the interaction of bills of rights equality clauses and benign discrimination, consideration is given to the formulation of the Australian Human Rights Bill—a bill of which Gareth Evans was one of the principal draftsmen.

scholarly journals Monovision and the Misperception of Motion

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Burge ◽  
Victor Rodriguez-Lopez ◽  
Carlos Dorronsoro
Keyword(s):  
Processing Speed ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
The United States ◽  
Illusory Motion ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
System A ◽  
Spatial Frequencies ◽  
Stereo Motion ◽  
Pulfrich Effect

Monovision corrections are a common treatment for presbyopia. Each eye is fit with a lens that sharply focuses light from a different distance, causing the image in one eye to be blurrier than the other. Millions of people in the United States and Europe have monovision corrections, but little is known about how differential blur affects motion perception. We investigated by measuring the Pulfrich effect, a stereo-motion phenomenon first reported nearly 100 years ago. When a moving target is viewed with unequal retinal illuminance or contrast in the two eyes, the target appears to be closer or further in depth than it actually is, depending on its frontoparallel direction. The effect occurs because the image with lower illuminance or contrast is processed more slowly. The mismatch in processing speed causes a neural disparity, which results in the illusory motion in depth. What happens with differential blur? Remarkably, differential blur causes a reverse Pulfrich effect, an apparent paradox. Blur reduces contrast and should therefore cause processing delays. But the reverse Pulfrich effect implies that the blurry image is processed more quickly. The paradox is resolved by recognizing that: i) blur reduces the contrast of high-frequency image components more than low-frequency image components, and ii) high spatial frequencies are processed more slowly than low spatial frequencies, all else equal. Thus, this new illusion—the reverse Pulfrich effect—can be explained by known properties of the early visual system. A quantitative analysis shows that the associated misperceptions are large enough to impact public safety.

The Relationship between Prejudice and Wage Penalties for Gay Men in the United States

ILR Review ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 650-675 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Burn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Standard Deviation ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
Empirical Relationship ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Standard Deviation Increase ◽  
Attitudes Toward Homosexuality ◽  
Prejudicial Attitudes

This article estimates the empirical relationship between prejudicial attitudes toward homosexuality and the wages of gay men in the United States. It combines data on prejudicial attitudes toward homosexuality from the General Social Survey with data on wages from the U.S. Decennial Censuses and American Community Surveys—both aggregated to the state level. The author finds that a one standard deviation increase in the share of individuals in a state who are prejudiced toward homosexuals is correlated with a decrease in the wages of gay men of between 2.7% and 4.0%. The results also suggest that the prejudice of managers is responsible for this correlation. The author finds that a one standard deviation increase in the share of the managers in a state who are prejudiced toward homosexuals is associated with a 1.9% decrease in the wages of gay men. The author finds no evidence that the wage penalty for gay men is correlated with the prejudice of customers or co-workers.

What Is the Legal `Standard of Medical Care' When There Is No Standard Medical Care? A Survey of the Use of Home Apnea Monitoring by Neonatology Fellowship Training Programs in the United States

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 89 (6) ◽  
pp. 1083-1088
Author(s):  
William Meadow ◽  
David Mendez ◽  
John Lantos ◽  
Robert Hipps ◽  
Michele Ostrowski
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Intensive Care ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
Neonatal Intensive Care ◽  
Training Programs ◽  
The United States ◽  
Supplemental Oxygen ◽  
Expert Opinions ◽  
Legal Standard ◽  
Apnea Monitoring

In treating a patient, a doctor is obliged to use the skill and care that is ordinarily used by reasonably well-qualified doctors in similar cases. In addition, the only way in which a juror may decide whether the defendant used the skill and care which the law required of him or her is from evidence presented by doctors called as expert witnesses (cf Illinois Pattern Jury Instructions). However, what should be done if expert opinions differ concerning the care that is "ordinarily used"? Home apnea monitoring (HAM) is prescribed at times for graduates of neonatal intensive care units despite the fact that indications for its use are not well established and efficacy is completely unknown. The authors attempted to determine standards for HAM as it is currently practiced in neonatology training programs. The primary teaching hospital for each of the 99 neonatology training programs in the United States was identified. Both the medical director (MD) and a neonatal intensive care unit nurse manager (RN) were asked about the use of HAM in their own nursery for four clinical vignettes. Each vignette depicted a 1000-g birth weight infant, currently 7 weeks old and ready for discharge. In three vignettes, the infant had demonstrated no apnea, mild apnea (resolved by 2 weeks of age), or moderate apnea (requiring theophylline therapy at discharge) during the hospital course. In the fourth vignette, the infant had no apnea but was to be discharged home with supplemental oxygen. For 67 of 99 training programs, paired responses of RN managers and MD directors were obtained. For infants with no apnea or mild apnea, approximately 85% of RN/MD pairs agreed that HAM would not be used at their institution, 2% would use HAM, and 12% responded that they might use HAM depending on individual circumstances. In contrast, for the premature infant with moderate apnea, there was much less agreement. Sixteen percent of RN/MD pairs responded that HAM would not be used, 39% would use HAM, and 19% might. Remarkably, for this vignette 25% of the RN/MD responses disagreed on the practice of HAM at their own center. Similarly, for the infant with home oxygen, 15% of RN/MD responses agreed that HAM would not be used, 49% answered that HAM would be used, 10% were uncertain, and 25% disagreed on the use of HAM at their own center. It is concluded that (1) for premature infants with no or mild apnea, HAM is currently prescribed by a minority of fellowship-associated neonatology programs, and (2) no obvious consensus exists for HAM in the context of moderate apnea or home oxygen therapy. For many infants, there is no "standard care" for HAM in the neonatology community at this time. "Expert" opinions of the legal "standard of care" for HAM should reflect this fact.

Talking About Americans: The Image of the United States in English-Canadian Schools, 1900–1965

2006 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 382-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy von Heyking
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Canadian Identity ◽  
Canadian Citizenship ◽  
The Impact ◽  
English Canadian ◽  
Over Time

History, civics, and social studies courses in Canadian schools have always represented some official understanding of Canadian citizenship, even Canadian identity. They have prepared children for citizenship and the exercise of their adult duties in the community. As historian Ken Osborne argues, citizenship remains a “flexibly protean” term, changing over time according to setting, and always resisted or undermined by those who disagree with the official understanding imposed upon them. While it may be difficult to assess the impact of the school's messages on students, we can identify the official ideas about English-Canadian citizenship and identity transmitted by schools.

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