Psychology 2032A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Illusory Correlation, Civil Rights Cases, Availability Heuristic

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2032A/B
• Professor: John Campbell

Document Summary

Risk is vied as a range: probabilities change across time, interaction among offender characteristics and situation. Risk assessment has two components: prediction, management. In criminal settings: risk assessments conducted at major decision points: Release: public safety outweighs solicitor-client privilege. Two types of errors are dependent on each other (false positive and false negative) Each outcome has different consequences for offender or society. 1960s: civil rights cases involving accuracy of mental health professionals in predicting risk: baxstrom v. herald (1966) Was being detained longer than his sentence and ordered to release him; as a result. Out of 400 patients released, only 60 committed a violent act over a 3- Baxstrom and dixon studies: year period: had a base rate for violence that were low, high false positive rate. Ennis and litwack 91974) characterized clinical expertise in violence risk assessment as similar to flipping coins in the courtroom .