The effects of legal involvement on crime victims' psychological adjustment

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the effects of legal involvement of crime victims on their psychological adjustment. First, causes of possible effects are described, which may be located within the procedure or the outcome of the legal process. Then, the available evidence is reviewed, most of it suggesting that legal involvement does not strongly affect the victims' psychological adjustment, neither negatively nor positively. The chapter continues with a discussion of whether victims should be advised to report the assault to the police or not, and it describes relevant decision criteria, such as victim adjustment retributive justice, victim compensation, victim security and societal security. Finally, suggestions for future research are outlined, pointing to necessary methodological improvements in the design of future studies on legal involvement.

Pb pollution from leaded gasoline in South America in the context of a 2000-year metallurgical history

Exploitation of the extensive polymetallic deposits of the Andean Altiplano in South America since precolonial times has caused substantial emissions of neurotoxic lead (Pb) into the atmosphere; however, its historical significance compared to recent Pb pollution from leaded gasoline is not yet resolved. We present a comprehensive Pb emission history for the last two millennia for South America, based on a continuous, high-resolution, ice core record from Illimani glacier. Illimani is the highest mountain of the eastern Bolivian Andes and is located at the northeastern margin of the Andean Altiplano. The ice core Pb deposition history revealed enhanced Pb enrichment factors (EFs) due to metallurgical processing for silver production during periods of the Tiwanaku/Wari culture (AD 450–950), the Inca empires (AD 1450–1532), colonial times (AD 1532–1900), and tin production at the beginning of the 20th century. After the 1960s, Pb EFs increased by a factor of 3 compared to the emission level from metal production, which we attribute to gasoline-related Pb emissions. Our results show that anthropogenic Pb pollution levels from road traffic in South America exceed those of any historical metallurgy in the last two millennia, even in regions with exceptional high local metallurgical activity.

Punitive reactions to completed crimes versus accidentally uncompleted crimes

Previous studies have shown that the harm caused by crime affects punitive reactions even if differences in the degree of harm are merely accidental. However, it remains unclear whether the effect is direct or whether it is mediated by attributed responsibility or blame. Participants were 303 university students who listened to 4 case vignettes (between-subjects design). Half received information about a completed crime and half about an accidentally uncompleted crime. Crime type was either fraud or rape. The results suggest that individuals consider the actual harm to a significantly greater extent than attribution theory would predict. Moreover, the link between harm and punishment was virtually not mediated by attributed blame and not moderated by individual differences in morality. Future studies should investigate whether the harm-punishment link is a result of an automatic act of retaliation or a desire to compensate for the harm done to the victim (restorative justice).

Mikro- versus Makroperspektive der retributiven Gerechtigkeit, Strafziele und die Forderung nach Strafe

Wie Personen auf Straftaten reagieren und welche Strafziele sie dabei verfolgen, war bisher kaum Gegenstand psychologischer Forschung. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird die dimensionale Struktur der Präferenz von Strafzielen untersucht. In zwei Befragungen wurden juristischen Laien Fallgeschichten zur Beurteilung vorgelegt (Raubüberfall, Körperverletzung, Betrug, Vergewaltigung). Die multivariaten Auswertungen weisen eine hohe Übereinstimmung auf: Strafziele lassen sich durch die zwei voneinander unabhängigen Dimensionen Strafhärte und Mikro- versus Makroperspektive klassifizieren. Wird eine Makroperspektive eingenommen, so ist dies mit einer stärkeren Gewichtung von Gesellschaftsinteressen verbunden sowie mit der Präferenz für das Strafziel der positiven Generalprävention. Die Mikroperspektive ist hingegen mit der Überzeugung verbunden, dass Gerechtigkeit insbesondere aus der Perspektive der konkret Beteiligten herzustellen ist. Je nach geforderter Strafhärte geht die Mikroperspektive mit einem Bias entweder für das Opfer und das Strafziel der Vergeltung oder aber für den Täter und das Strafziel der Resozialisierung einher.

Source Memory for Mental Imagery: Influences of the Stimuli’s Ease of Imagery.

The present study investigated how ease of imagery influences source monitoring accuracy. Two experiments were conducted in order to examine how ease of imagery influences the probability of source confusions of perceived and imagined completions of natural symmetric shapes. The stimuli consisted of binary pictures of natural objects, namely symmetric pictures of birds, butterflies, insects, and leaves. The ease of imagery (indicating the similarity of the sources) and the discriminability (indicating the similarity of the items) of each stimulus were estimated in a pretest and included as predictors of the memory performance for these stimuli. It was found that confusion of the sources becomes more likely when the imagery process was relatively easy. However, if the different processes of source monitoring-item memory, source memory and guessing biases-are disentangled, both experiments support the assumption that the effect of decreased source memory for easily imagined stimuli is due to decision processes and misinformation at retrieval rather than encoding processes and memory retention. The data were modeled with a Bayesian hierarchical implementation of the one high threshold source monitoring model.

Why misinformation is reported: evidence from a warning and a source-monitoring task

People report suggested misinformation about a previously witnessed event for manifold reasons, such as social pressure, lack of memory of the original aspect, or a firm belief to remember the misinformation from the witnessed event. In our experiments (N = 429), which follow Loftus's paradigm, we tried to disentangle the reasons for reporting a central and a peripheral piece of misinformation in a recognition task by examining (a) the impact a warning about possible misinformation has on the error rate, and (b) whether once reported misinformation was actually attributed to the witnessed event in a later source-monitoring (SM) task. Overall, a misinformation effect was found for both items. The warning strongly reduced the misinformation effect, but only for the central item. In contrast, reports of the peripheral misinformation were correctly attributed to the misinformation source or, at least, ascribed to guesswork much more often than the central ones. As a consequence, after the SM task, the initially higher error rate for the peripheral item was even lower than that of the central item. Results convincingly show that the reasons for reporting misinformation, and correspondingly also the potential to avoid them in legal settings, depend on the centrality of the misinformation.

Na 1 Nachlass Max Horkheimer, 56 - Korrespondenzen u.a. mit Felix Weil (p. I 26, 131-348)

12 Briefe zwischen Anna Weil und Max Horkheimer, 1935-1936; 82 Briefe und Beilage zwischen Felix Weil, Margot de Weil und Max Horkheimer, 1934-1941; 1 Brief von D. Charnass an Felix Weil, 25.04.1936; 4 Briefe zwischen Dolson Wood Company und Max Horkheimer, 16.05.1941, 19.05.1941; 1 Brief von Max Horkheimer an das American Consul General Havana, 21.03.1941; 1 Brief von Max Horkheimer an Byron H. Uhl, 07.01.1941; 2 Brief zwischen Dorothy B. Padwa und Max Horkheimer, 01.03.1940, 05.03.1940; 1 Brief von Max Horkheimer an Collector of Customs, 08.10.1938; 1 Brief von D. Charnass an Felix Weil, 25.04.1936; 2 Briefe zwischen D. Charnass und Charles Rosenheck, 25.04.1936; 1 Zeugnis von The State Education Department an Charles Rosenheck, 25.04.1936; 1 Zeugniskopie, 24.04.1936; 1 Brief von Charles Rosenheck über Felix Weil, 23.04.1936; 1 Bescheinigung von Albert Marinelli, 24.04.1936; 3 Briefe zwischen George Weil und Max Horkheimer, 22.02.1937, 1937; 2 Briefe zwischen Georg Weil und Max Horkheimer, 06.04.1942, 08.04.1942; 1 Brief von Hans Weil an Max Horkheimer, 01.01.1939; 2 Briefe von Max Horkheimer an Duggan; 1 Brief und Beilage von Hans Weil an Paul Tillich, 11.10.1940; 1 Brief von Max Horkheimer an Hilde Frankel, 12.10.1940; 3 Briefe und 1 Beilage Juliana Weil, 06.06.1936, 1936; 1 Brief von Weinbaum an Max Horkheimer; 2 Briefe zwischen Jacob Weinberger und Max Horkheimer, 20.02.1946, 28.02.1946; 2 Briefe zwischen Ria Weinig, Margit Weinig und Max Horkheimer, 20.07.1949, 29.07.1949; 1 Brief und Beilage von B. Weinryb an Max Horkheimer, 04.03.1941; 1 Brief von Philipp Weintraub an Max Horkheimer, 20.11.1937;

Israel Zangwill's Stellung zum Judentum

Freiburg i.Br., Univ., Diss.