Cargando…

Are Forensic Experts Already Biased before Adversarial Legal Parties Hire Them?

This survey of 206 forensic psychologists tested the “filtering” effects of preexisting expert attitudes in adversarial proceedings. Results confirmed the hypothesis that evaluator attitudes toward capital punishment influence willingness to accept capital case referrals from particular adversarial...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Neal, Tess M. S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4849669/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27124416
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0154434
_version_ 1782429574613696512
author Neal, Tess M. S.
author_facet Neal, Tess M. S.
author_sort Neal, Tess M. S.
collection PubMed
description This survey of 206 forensic psychologists tested the “filtering” effects of preexisting expert attitudes in adversarial proceedings. Results confirmed the hypothesis that evaluator attitudes toward capital punishment influence willingness to accept capital case referrals from particular adversarial parties. Stronger death penalty opposition was associated with higher willingness to conduct evaluations for the defense and higher likelihood of rejecting referrals from all sources. Conversely, stronger support was associated with higher willingness to be involved in capital cases generally, regardless of referral source. The findings raise the specter of skewed evaluator involvement in capital evaluations, where evaluators willing to do capital casework may have stronger capital punishment support than evaluators who opt out, and evaluators with strong opposition may work selectively for the defense. The results may provide a partial explanation for the “allegiance effect” in adversarial legal settings such that preexisting attitudes may contribute to partisan participation through a self-selection process.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-4849669
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2016
publisher Public Library of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-48496692016-05-07 Are Forensic Experts Already Biased before Adversarial Legal Parties Hire Them? Neal, Tess M. S. PLoS One Research Article This survey of 206 forensic psychologists tested the “filtering” effects of preexisting expert attitudes in adversarial proceedings. Results confirmed the hypothesis that evaluator attitudes toward capital punishment influence willingness to accept capital case referrals from particular adversarial parties. Stronger death penalty opposition was associated with higher willingness to conduct evaluations for the defense and higher likelihood of rejecting referrals from all sources. Conversely, stronger support was associated with higher willingness to be involved in capital cases generally, regardless of referral source. The findings raise the specter of skewed evaluator involvement in capital evaluations, where evaluators willing to do capital casework may have stronger capital punishment support than evaluators who opt out, and evaluators with strong opposition may work selectively for the defense. The results may provide a partial explanation for the “allegiance effect” in adversarial legal settings such that preexisting attitudes may contribute to partisan participation through a self-selection process. Public Library of Science 2016-04-28 /pmc/articles/PMC4849669/ /pubmed/27124416 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0154434 Text en © 2016 Tess M. S. Neal http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Neal, Tess M. S.
Are Forensic Experts Already Biased before Adversarial Legal Parties Hire Them?
title Are Forensic Experts Already Biased before Adversarial Legal Parties Hire Them?
title_full Are Forensic Experts Already Biased before Adversarial Legal Parties Hire Them?
title_fullStr Are Forensic Experts Already Biased before Adversarial Legal Parties Hire Them?
title_full_unstemmed Are Forensic Experts Already Biased before Adversarial Legal Parties Hire Them?
title_short Are Forensic Experts Already Biased before Adversarial Legal Parties Hire Them?
title_sort are forensic experts already biased before adversarial legal parties hire them?
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4849669/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27124416
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0154434
work_keys_str_mv AT nealtessms areforensicexpertsalreadybiasedbeforeadversariallegalpartieshirethem