Educating jurors about eyewitness testimony in criminal cases with circumstantial and forensic evidence.

We investigated whether the Interview-Identification-Eyewitness factors (I-I-Eye) educational aid could sensitize mock jurors to the quality of eyewitness evidence in criminal cases which also contained circumstantial and forensic evidence. After participants were randomly assigned to read either the I-I-Eye or a control aid, they read a trial transcript containing either strong or weak eyewitness evidence. The police consistently followed scientific interviewing and identification procedures in the strong case, but not in the weak case.

Retrospective Appraisals Mediate the Effects of Combat Experiences on PTS and Depression Symptoms in U.S. Army Medics.

A life-threatening traumatic experience can cause physical and psychological distress, but it can also be remembered with pride from having demonstrated one's courage and abilities under severe circumstances. Characteristics of the event, early response, as well as later personal reflection, together determine the individual's response to a traumatic event. We investigated how traumatic combat experiences and retrospective appraisals of those experiences affected reports of symptoms of posttraumatic stress and depression in 324 U.

Forgetting feelings: Opposite biases in reports of the intensity of past emotion and mood.

Memory for feelings is subject to fading and bias over time. In 2 studies, the authors examined whether the magnitude and direction of bias depend on the type of feeling being recalled: emotion or mood. A few days after the U.

An examination of the causes and solutions to eyewitness error.

Eyewitness error is one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions. In fact, the American Psychological Association estimates that one in three eyewitnesses make an erroneous identification. In this review, we look briefly at some of the causes of eyewitness error.

Like Schrödinger's cat, the impact bias is both dead and alive: reply to Wilson and Gilbert (2013).

In their comment on our article on affective forecasting (Levine, Lench, Kaplan, & Safer, 2012), Wilson and Gilbert (2013) criticized the meta-analysis, proposed alternative explanations for the empirical studies, and concluded that the impact bias is alive and well. Our reply demonstrates that, irrespective of the exclusion of effects and selective recoding of effects recommended for the meta-analysis, the pattern of results remains the same: Study participants' forecasts are more accurate when they report their feelings about a focal event, or immediately after a focal event, than when they report their feelings in general after a delay. New analyses rule out individual differences and focalism as alternative explanations for the results of our empirical studies.

What Italian Defense Attorneys Know about Factors Affecting Eyewitness Accuracy: A Comparison with U.S. and Norwegian Samples.

We surveyed 100 Italian defense attorneys about their knowledge and beliefs about factors affecting eyewitness accuracy. The results of similar surveys show that U.S.

Accuracy and artifact: reexamining the intensity bias in affective forecasting.

Research on affective forecasting shows that people have a robust tendency to overestimate the intensity of future emotion. We hypothesized that (a) people can accurately predict the intensity of their feelings about events and (b) a procedural artifact contributes to people's tendency to overestimate the intensity of their feelings in general. People may misinterpret the forecasting question as asking how they will feel about a focal event, but they are later asked to report their feelings in general without reference to that event.

Aging and long-term memory for emotionally valenced events.

In 2008, 1103 ardent Boston Red Sox fans answered questions about their team's 2003 loss and 2004 win in baseball championship games with archrival New York Yankees. Contrary to predictions based on socioemotional selectivity theory, there were no significant interactions of age and event valence for accuracy in remembering event details, or for self-reported subjective vividness and rehearsal of the memories. Fans 65 years and older tended to remember feeling only sad about the 2003 loss, whereas fans 25 years and under tended to remember feeling both sad and angry.

Effects of event valence on long-term memory for two baseball championship games.

We investigated how event valence affected accuracy and vividness of long-term memory for two comparable public events. In 2008, 1,563 fans answered questions about objective details concerning two decisive baseball championship games between the Yankees (2003 winners) and the Red Sox (2004 winners). Both between- and within-groups analyses indicated that fans remembered the game their team won significantly more accurately than the game their team lost.

Focalism and the underestimation of future emotion: when it's worse than imagined.

People typically exaggerate the emotional impact of future events. This occurs because of focalism, the tendency to focus on one event and neglect to consider how emotion will be mitigated by the surrounding context. Neglecting context, however, should lead people to underestimate future emotion when context focuses attention on the event.

Killing versus witnessing in combat trauma and reports of PTSD symptoms and domestic violence.

Active participation in combat trauma increased reports of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms over passive witnessing of trauma. Using archival data from 376 U.S.

The Psychology of Referencing in Psychology Journal Articles.

Citation statistics can affect major professional decisions, but little is known about how important a particular reference is to the citing document. We asked 49 psychologists to rate the importance of every reference in their own empirical paper and to indicate the primary citation reason. References cited for conceptual ideas or to justify methods and data analyses were regarded as more important than references cited for general background, limitations, or future research.

Long-term memory for the emotional gist and the emotional essence of an experience.

We investigated accuracy in recalling past emotional behaviours and emotionality. Male couples discussed the history of their relationship, and coders rated the extent to which each partner engaged in behaviours such as complimenting or criticising. These ratings were combined into dimensions representing the deeper, emotional essence of that partner's discussion (expressions of We-ness, Fondness, Negativity, and Disappointment).

Individual differences in misremembering pre-psychotherapy distress: personality and memory distortion.

In 2 studies, clients were asked, after terminating psychotherapy, to complete a measure of symptomatic distress exactly as they had in their pre-therapy assessment. Most clients overestimated their pre-therapy distress, which may lead to an illusion of positive change. A 3rd study found no overestimation of previously reported distress in a control sample.

The meaning of pain: cancer patients' rating and recall of pain intensity and affect.

The present study investigated the influence of an increase in present pain intensity on the rating and recall of the intensity and affective dimensions of clinical pain. Thirty-two cancer patients who reported that movement caused or exacerbated their pain rated their present pain intensity and affect before and after a session of physical therapy. Subjects also rated their usual, highest and lowest pain intensity and pain affect for the previous 3 days, and were randomly assigned to make these ratings either before or after the physical therapy session.

Effects of present pain level on recall of chronic pain and medication use.

The present study experimentally manipulated pain intensity in chronic pain patients to evaluate whether the present pain level influenced the recall of past pain and medication use. For 1 week 30 chronic pain patients recorded every change in their pain levels and every use of medication on an electronic diary. At the end of the week, we evaluated recall of pain level and medication use for the previous day and week either before (control group, n = 15) or immediately after a physical therapy (PT) session (PT group, n = 15).