The present study attempted to determine the impact of alternative verdict choices on the decisions of mock jurors. Subjects used in this study as mock jurors were all college undergraduates. They were shown one of two versions of a videotaped simulated murder trial. Both films presented a defendant who appeared to be suffering emotional difficulties, but in one film the defendant had clearly committed the act while in the other film the defendant's actions were less certain. Subjects than gave their individual verdicts and, after deliberation with other subjects, a total jury verdict. The verdicts available to the subjects varied across three conditions such that the subjects in one condition were only allowed to find the defendant to be innocent or guilty. In another condition the subjects could find the defendant innocent, guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI). In the third condition the subjects were allowed to choose between innocent, guilty, NGRI, and guilty but mentally ill (GBMI). The results indicated that the addition of the “mental health” verdicts had a significant impact on the decisions of the jurors. In particular, it appears that only defendants who would otherwise have been found innocent were likely to be found NGRI. This study also indicated that the GBMI verdict is very attractive to mock jurors. Indeed, even innocent defendants were found to be GBMI, a form of guilt, when this alternative was made available. These findings raise potentially important constitutional and practical issues for the trial of emotionally disturbed criminal defendants.

Summarizes the research on the psychological stress that was precipitated by the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear reactor accident and that could be caused by a restart of TMI's undamaged reactor. The legal background of whether the reactor should be turned on again is explained within the context of case law concerning recovery of damages caused by emotional trauma. Recent court decisions are explored for implications regarding the role of psychology in environmental use assessments that may be required by the National Environmental Policy Act. (41 ref)

No abstract

Children between the ages of 4 and 8 were asked to choose the two most similar photographs of human faces from each of 96 groups of three (triads). It was prearranged so that two of the three photographs would contain either the common element of hats or facial expressions of emotion. The results showed that there was a significant increase with age in the use of hats and facial expressions as the basis of pairing when these were the only prearranged common elements in a given triad. There was no difference between these methods of pairing, indicating that the use of either kind of common element offered no greater difficulty than the other. However, when the subjects had to choose between pairing photographs with either hats or expressions within a given triad, 4-year-old children paired most frequently using hats while older children used emotional expressions. Also, there were found to be significant differences in the number of pairings depending on which emotion was displayed in the photographs.

Adolescent male offenders and nonoffenders were compared on two tasks designed to assess reactions to the nonverbal emotion expressions of others. It was found that the offender group was less accurate in labeling another's emotion states but that this difference was apparently a function of verbal intelligence. Further, the results of the second task, a task not related to verbal intelligence, indicated that the punitive decisions of both the offender and nonoffender groups were similarly affected by the actors' nonverbal emotions. These results wree discussed as indicating that much of the social insensitivity often ascribed to delinquents may simply be a result of impoverished verbal skills among this group. A deficit in verbal skills may preclude delinquents from adequately describing their perceptions of the emotional reactions of others and it may also necessitate a nonverbal, rather than verbal, reaction to others' emotions.