Browsing by Author "Urs, Medhini"

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    The effects of victim gender identity, juror gender, and judicial instructions on victim blaming, crime severity ratings, and verdicts in sexual assault trials
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022-02-18) Carter, Lisa M.; Goodmon, Leilani B.; Urs, Medhini; Rutledge-Jukes, Heath
    Transgender individuals may experience social discrimination and unfair legal considerations as crime victims. The current purpose was to investigate the relationship between the participant/jurors’ gender, the victims’ gender identity, and judge’s instructions to ignore the gender identity of the victim on perceptions of the victim and the crime and verdicts rendered in a sexual assault case. Overall, crime severity ratings were significantly lower for the trans male victim compared to the cisgender female victim. Male participants reported lower crime severity ratings for trials involving transgender victims compared to cisgender victims. However, victim blaming, likelihood that the defendant committed the crime, sentencing recommendations, verdict confidence, and conviction rates did not vary by the victim’s gender identity, the participant’s gender identity, nor the judge’s instructions. Participant gender as a predictor of verdict approached significance, indicating a trend for males to render more not guilty verdicts and females to render more guilty verdicts. In summary, male jurors perceived the crimes involving transgender victims as less severe and this may have impacted the rate of not guilty verdicts.
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    The influence of personality and money priming on outcomes in the prisoner’s dilemma
    (Florida Southern College, 2020-04) Urs, Medhini
    Money priming has been shown to cause behavioral changes in people, and make them more individualistic, persistent, and selfish. The money priming effect has been studied worldwide, and is known to have varying effect sizes depending on the method used to induce the prime. Game theoretical models have been utilized in studying the extent of money priming, however, there are mixed results with regards to the effect of money priming on outcomes in game theory. There may be a mediating factor of personality that has caused varying results in the literature. The proposed study aimed to determine whether money priming and personality (i.e., agreeableness and neuroticism) play a role in the outcomes of the prisoner’s dilemma. Contrary to previous research studies, results revealed that there was no evidence of money priming or personality playing a role in the rates of cooperation and defection in the prisoner’s dilemma game.
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    Too much on my mind: Cognitive load, working memory capacity, and framing effects.
    (North American Journal Of Psychology, 2019) Urs, Medhini; Goodmon, Leilani B.; Martin, Jordan
    When an option emphasizes positive aspects and gains (i.e., positive frame), people are more risk averse; when an option focuses on the negative aspects, and losses (i.e., negative frame), people are more risk seeking, even when the expected value of both options remain the same (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981; Whitney, Rinehart, & Hinson, 2008). Although individual working memory capacity (WMC) differences should be considered in framing effect studies, previous researchers failed to address WMC differences (De Martino, Kumaran, Seymour, & Dolan, 2006; Guo, Trueblood, & Deiderich, 2017; Igou & Bless, 2006; Whitney et al., 2008) and may have failed to induce a significant amount of cognitive load to impact the magnitude of framing effects (Whitney et al., 2008). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine if framing effects varied as a function of WMC under situations of high cognitive load (induced by a Reading Span Task). Consistent with the Cognitive-Affective Tradeoff account of framing (Gonzalez, Dana, Koshino, & Just, 2005), we found no effect of frame on rates of risk aversion and risk- seeking, for either high or low WMC individuals under high working memory load. However, participants were more riskseeking in response to high starting value conditions. In addition, the highest rates of risk-seeking were observed in the high WMC participants in negative frame - high starting value condition. These findings are somewhat consistent with Fuzzy Trace Theory (FTT) (Reyna, & Brainerd, 1991), and suggest that contrary to previous research on decision-making, in some situations (and in some experimental designs), high WMC participants may be more likely to fall prey to framing effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)