About This Project
Following the release of the highly-publicized series Making a Murderer, questions about police misconduct have been thrust into the national spotlight as viewers contemplated the possibility that Steven Avery was framed for murder by Wisconsin police. Some have argued that police planting of evidence is a common occurrence, whereas others believe it is rare and committed by only a corrupt few. The proposed research is the first to examine whether people are likely to engage in such misconduct.
Ask the Scientists
Join The DiscussionWhat is the context of this research?
The Steven Avery case has generated a heated discussion about the meaning of “justice” in our criminal justice system. Might there be cases in which criminal defendants have been convicted on the basis of false evidence planted by law enforcement?
Because no research has addressed this question, the public has been left to rely on speculation regarding the prevalence of such misconduct in our legal system. The field of social psychology, however, is well-positioned to examine this issue because of its proven track-record of challenging commonly-held assumptions about human behavior.
We will examine the possibility that under certain circumstances, ordinary people may engage in misconduct of the type alleged to have occurred in the Steven Avery case.
What is the significance of this project?
The current research is timely given the recent wave of attention being paid to the issue of police misconduct following the release of Making a Murderer, as well as generally heightened interest in police practices following a number of recent national protests.
It is important that we begin to understand the circumstances under which people might be compelled to circumvent due process in order to take justice into their own hands. Such a question is of paramount importance if we are to maintain a fair and just legal system.
By establishing an understanding of the factors that might lead someone to fabricate or plant evidence to incriminate another person, we will be better prepared to implement safeguards in the legal system that will protect the rights of individuals accused of crimes.
What are the goals of the project?
The proposed project will address three questions:
1) Is fabricating or planting evidence to incriminate another person a rare behavior committed by a few “bad apples,” or are ordinary, good people capable of committing such misconduct?
2) Are certain types of people more likely than others to engage in such behavior?
3) Under what conditions are people more or less likely to fabricate or plant evidence to incriminate another person?
The experimental methods we plan to utilize in this work are described in the "Methods" tab on this page.
Budget
Because a major goal of the project is to understand the prevalence of these phenomena nationwide, we plan to recruit a diverse sample of participants capturing a broad range of demographics using both laboratory and online recruitment techniques.
Our laboratory experiment also requires that we purchase two hidden cameras to facilitate covert observation of research participants. Specifically, participants will be given an opportunity to plant evidence to incriminate another individual of wrongdoing. An hourly research administrator is needed to help execute these experimental procedures. The use of experimental procedures to investigate legal questions has precedence in a large body of psychological research conducted over the last four decades.
By examining contextual factors as well as personality and racial factors in this work, we hope to elucidate the circumstances under which people are most likely to fabricate or plant evidence in order to ensure an individual’s conviction.
Endorsed by
Meet the Team
Team Bio
The team members are professors of psychology at Williams College. They all teach courses in social psychology, statistics, and research methodology and have extensive experience conducting scientific research.
Laura Smalarz
Laura Smalarz (Ph.D. 2015, Iowa State University) is a psychology and law researcher with an interest in criminal evidence as it relates to miscarriages of justice. Her primary focus is on eyewitness identification evidence and the conditions under which eyewitness evidence should be relied upon to assess guilt in criminal cases. Her work has been cited in a state Supreme Court case involving eyewitness identification evidence (Com v. Walker, 2014) and she is a member of the Innocence Project’s Research Advisory Board.
Jeremy Cone
Jeremy Cone (Ph.D. 2012, Cornell University)’s research interests
include social cognition and judgment and decision-making, particularly with
respect to how people’s thoughts, decisions, choices, and behaviors can be
influenced by processes outside of their conscious awareness. His work has been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Journal of Positive Psychology, Emotion, and many others.
Steven Fein
Steven Fein (Ph.D. 1991, University of Michigan) is a social psychologist and chair of the psychology department at Williams College. He has conducted extensive research on issues of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination for more than two decades, as well as on issues concerning suspicion, social influence, and jury decision making. In addition to publishing research articles on these topics he has co-edited two books and is the co-author of Social Psychology, which is now in its tenth edition and has been used by students in multiple countries around the world. He has served on the executive committee of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology and as the social and personality psychology representative at the American Psychological Association.
Kenneth Savitsky
Kenneth Savitsky (Ph.D. 1993, Cornell University) is a social psychologist whose research has examined the psychology of social judgments in a number of everyday contexts, including how people make health-related decisions and how they evaluate information related to the natural environment. His work has been supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Lab Notes
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