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Robert MacCoun Affiliated Professor
(1) Studying Diffusion of Sexual Behavior and Drug Use By Examining the High School Transition: In the delinquency, drug use, and sexual behavior literatures, there are a family of social diffusion models that attempt to describe the process by which certain risky or antisocial behaviors spread through populations via social learning or "local" norms of acceptability. A problem in testing such ideas in the field is that such effects are naturally confounded with age effects and common environmental factors (poverty, limited adult supervision, etc.) This summer I'll begin pilot research taking advantage of two structural factors: (a) the transition to high school, and (b) the fact that high school ranges from 9th to 12th grades in some districts but 10th to 12th grade in other districts. (2) Citizens' Evaluations of Corporate Conduct: I am collaborating with Professor John Darley and Post-Doctoral Fellow Jennifer Robbenolt of Princeton University on a series of studies examining lay intuitions about the use of monetary punishment in civil litigation. For example, who should receive the punitive damages--the plaintiff (who has already been compensated for loss through compensatory damages), the state, or some other recipient? How do jurors trade off symbolic vs. monetary punishments? When will a corporate apology reduce punishment? (3) Citizen Evaluations of Prevalence Reduction, Quantity Reduction, and Harm Reduction Across Social Policy Domains: In a recent paper (1998, American Psychologist) I distinguished three behavior change strategies for many social policy domains involving risky behavior (prevalence reduction, quantity reduction, and harm reduction) and noted that in some policy domains (e.g., sports equipment regulation), harm reduction is commonplace and prevalence and quantity reduction are "unthinkable"; in other domains (e.g., drug policy), the reverse is true. I plan to conduct a series of surveys of the general population plus relevant expert populations to explore the underlying psychological and philosophical bases for these attitudes. (4) Bias in the Interpretation of Research Evidence: My 1998 essay in Annual Review of Psychology identified several key variables influencing the degree of bias in the selection, interpretation, and evaluation of research evidence by experts, policy makers, and lay citizens. I am currently studying several of these factors in pilot research with Susannah Paletz. I am also planning archival research and computer modeling to examine the conditions under which communities of researchers are likely to weed out bias by individual researchers, and the conditions under which empirical findings can "crowd out" stereotypic beliefs and misconceptions. Selected Publications Anderson, M. C., & MacCoun, R. J. (1999). Goal conflict in juror assessments of compensatory and punitive damages. Law & Human Behavior, 23, 313-330. MacCoun, R. (1998). Toward a psychology of harm reduction. American Psychologist, 53, 1199-1208. MacCoun, R. (1998). Biases in the interpretation and use of research results, Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 259-287. MacCoun, R., & Reuter, P. (1997). Interpreting Dutch cannabis policy: Reasoning by analogy in the legalization debate. Science, 278, 47-52. July 2003
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