Self-Verification as a Mediator of Mothers’ Self-Fulfilling Effects on Adolescents\u27 Educational Attainment

This research examined whether self-verification acts as a general mediational process of self-fulfilling prophecies. The authors tested this hypothesis by examining whether self-verification processes mediated self-fulfilling prophecy effects within a different context and with a different belief and a different outcome than has been used in prior research. Results of longitudinal data obtained from mothers and their adolescents (N = 332) indicated that mothers’ beliefs about their adolescents’ educational outcomes had a significant indirect effect on adolescents’ academic attainment through adolescents’ educational aspirations. This effect, observed over a 6-year span, provided evidence that mothers’ self-fulfilling effects occurred, in part, because mothers’ false beliefs influenced their adolescents’ own educational aspirations, which adolescents then self-verified through their educational attainment. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed

Pulling away from the trigger: the influences of purpose in life and self-affirmation on decisions to shoot

IntroductionRecent data suggests significant racial disparities in police killings in the United States: Much research finds that Black men are killed by police officers at higher rates than White men, and many individuals killed by police have been unarmed.MethodToward addressing psychological mechanisms at play in these complicated decision contexts, the current study tested the effectiveness of two writing tasks at reducing the unjustified shooting of unarmed targets using a virtual shooting-decision platform. Participants wrote either about their sense of purpose, self-affirming values, or a control topic and then played a first-person shooter video game, which randomly presented pictures of Black and White armed and unarmed targets. Participants were instructed not to shoot unarmed targets and to shoot armed targets.ResultsResults indicated that relative to controls, writing about either purpose or self-affirming values reduced the probability of shooting unarmed targets, without negatively impacting shooting decision reaction time

Reply to Rosenblum et al. and Carriquiry and Ommen: Understanding probative value, triers-of-fact, and usefulness of validity study results

We thank Rosenblum et al. (1) and Carriquiry and Ommen (2) for their interest in our article (3) regarding the validity of cartridge-case comparisons. They make three assertions: that we misrepresent the technique's probative value, that setting trier-of-fact pretest odds = 1 is improper, and that our results may not speak to the validity of the forensic technique. We appreciate the opportunity to clarify these misunderstandings, which we address in turn. Rosenblum et al.'s belief that we misrepresent the technique’s probative value stems from their viewing trier-of-fact posttest beliefs as the measure of probative value (or, in their words, “strength of forensic evidence”). In fact, the likelihood ratio is the true measure of probative value. Guyll et al. correctly highlight the likelihood ratio as the empirical probative value measure that determines how much change is justified in trier-of-fact beliefs from any particular pretest value to a consequent posttest value. Likewise, the actual transcript (4) of the relevant testimony cited by Rosenblum et al. reveals an accurate portrayal of the technique’s probative value as quantified by the likelihood ratio by showing how much change it would justify in the trier-of-fact beliefs from an initial pretest value to a consequent posttest value. Nowhere do Guyll et al. or the testimony improperly represent posttest beliefs as the measure of probative value.This reply is published as M. Guyll, S. Madon, Y. Yang, K.A. Burd, G. Wells, Reply to Rosenblum et al. and Carriquiry and Ommen: Understanding probative value, triers-of-fact, and usefulness of validity study results, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 121 (45) e2316886121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2316886121 (2024). Copyright © 2024 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. This article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND)

Cartridge Case Comparison Validity Study 2022

ARB_ID: Arbitrary number that identifies individual examiners SET: Of the eight comparison sets given to each examiner, this identifies the order in which they were listed. BRAND: 1=Beretta92FS; 2=HiPointC9 MATCH: 0=Different_source; 1=Same_source AFTE3: Examiner decision: 1=Identificatioin; 2=Inconclusive; 3=Elimination N_8GOOD: Total number of valid decisions returned by examiner