Innumeracy and unpacking: Bridging the nomothetic/idiographic divide in violence risk assessment

Law and Human Behavior

Volumn 36, Issue 6, 2012, Pages 548-554

  Scurich, Nicholas ^a   Monahan, John ^b   John, Richard S ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA SCHOOL OF LAW   (United States)

Author keywords

actuarial risk assessment; decision making; numeracy

Indexed keywords

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; AGED; ARTICLE; DECISION MAKING; FEMALE; FORENSIC PSYCHIATRY; HUMAN; LEGAL ASPECT; MALE; MIDDLE AGED; PERSONALITY TEST; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; RISK ASSESSMENT; RISK FACTOR; STATISTICAL ANALYSIS; STATISTICAL MODEL; STATISTICS; VIOLENCE; YOUNG ADULT;

ACTUARIAL ANALYSIS; ADOLESCENT; ADULT; AGED; COMMITMENT OF MENTALLY ILL; DECISION MAKING; FEMALE; HUMANS; LIKELIHOOD FUNCTIONS; MALE; MIDDLE AGED; PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT; RISK ASSESSMENT; RISK FACTORS; VIOLENCE; YOUNG ADULT;

EID: 84874295551     PISSN: 01477307     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1037/h0093994     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. Bernstein, B. H. (1999). The ecological validity of jury simulations: Is the jury still out? Law & Human Behavior, 23, 75-91. doi:10.1023/A: 1022326807441
2. Cohon, R. (2010). Hume's moral philosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/humemoral/# io
3. Cooke, D. J., & Michie, C. (2010). Limitations of diagnostic precision and predictive utility in the individual case: A challenge for forensic practice. Law and Human Behavior, 34, 259-274. doi:10.1007/s10979-009- 9176-x
4. Dawes, R. M., Faust, D., & Meehl, P. E. (1989). Clinical versus actuarial judgment. Science, 243, 1668-1674. doi:10.1126/science.2648573
5. Fagerlin, A., Zikmund-Fisher, B., Ubel, P. A., Jankovic, A., Derry, H. A., & Smith, D. M. (2007). Measuring numeracy without a math test: Development of the Subjective Numeracy Scale. Medical Decision Making, 27, 672-680. doi:10.1177/0272989X07304449
6. Faigman, D. (2010). A preliminary exploration of the problem of reasoning from general scientific data to individualized decision-making. Brooklyn Law Review, 75, 1115-1136.
7. Gigerenzer, G. (2002). In the year 2054: Innumeracy defeated. In P. Seldmeir & T. Betsch (Eds.) Frequency processing and cognition (pp. 55-66). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
8. Gigerenzer, G., & Muir Gray, J. (Eds.). (2011). Better doctors, better patients, better decisions: Envisioning health care 2020. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
9. Grove, W., & Meehl, P. (1996). Comparative efficiency of informal (subjective, impressionistic) and formal (mechanical, algorithmic) prediction procedures: The clinical statistical controversy. Psychology, Public Policy and Law, 2, 293-323.
10. Hanson, R. K., & Howard, P. D. (2010). Individual confidence intervals do not inform decision makers about the accuracy of risk assessment evaluations. Law and Human Behavior, 34, 275-281. doi:10.1007/s10979-010-9227-3
11. Harcourt, B. (2007). Against prediction: Profiling, policing, and punishing in an actuarial age. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
12. Harris, G. T., Rice, M. E., & Quinsey, V. L. (2008). Shall evidence-based risk assessment be abandoned? British Journal of Psychiatry, 192, 154. doi:10.1192/bjp.192.2.154
13. Hart, S. D., Cooke, D. J., & Michie, C. (2007). Precision of actuarial risk assessment instruments: Evaluating the "margins of error" of group v. individual predictions of violence. British Journal of Psychiatry, 190, s60-s65. doi:10.1192/bjp.190.5.s60
14. Heilbrun, K., Douglas, K. S., & Yasuhara, K. (2009). Violence-risk assessment: Core controversies. In J. Skeem, K. S. Douglas, & S. Lilienfield (Eds.), Psychological science in the courtroom: Controversies and consensus (pp. 333-357). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
15. Heilbrun, K., Dvoskin, J., Hart, S., & McNiel, D. (1999). Violence risk communication: Implications for research, policy, and practice. Health, Risk & Society, 1, 91-106. doi:10.1080/13698579908407009
16. Heilbrun, K., Wolbransky, M., Shah, S., & Kelly, R. (2010). Risk communication of terrorist acts, natural disasters, and criminal violence: Comparing the processes of understanding and responding. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 28, 717-729. doi:10.1002/bsl.940
17. Hume, D. (1739). A treatise of human nature. London, UK: John Noon.
18. Janus, E., & Meehl, P. E. (1997). Assessing the legal standard for predictions of dangerousness in sexual offender commitment proceedings. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 3, 33-64. doi:10.1037/1076-8971.3.1.33
19. Janus, E., & Prentky, R. A. (2003). Forensic use of actuarial risk assessment with sex offenders: Accuracy, admissibility and accountability. American Law Review, 40, 1443-1502.
20. Johnson, E. J., Hershey, J., Meszaros, J., & Kunreuther, H. (1993). Framing, probability distortions, and insurance decisions. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 7, 35-51. doi:10.1007/BF01065313
21. Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1972). Subjective probability: A judgment of representativeness. Cognitive Psychology, 3, 430-454.
22. Koehler, J. J. (2006). Train our jurors. In G. Gigerenzer and C. Engel (Eds.), Heuristics and the law (pp. 303-325). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
23. Mason, W., & Suri, S. (2012). Conducting behavioral research on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Behavior Research Methods, 44, 1-23. doi: 10.3758/s13428-011-0124-6
24. Mellers, B., Hertwig, R., & Kahneman, D. (2001). Do frequency representations eliminate conjunction effects? An exercise in adversarial collaboration. Psychological Science, 12, 269-275. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00350
25. Miller, M., & Morris, N. (1988). Predictions of dangerousness: An argument for limited use. Violence and Victims, 3, 263-283.
26. Mitchell, G., Monahan, J., & Walker, L. (2011). The ASA's missed opportunity to promote sound science in court. Sociological Methods and Research, 4, 605-620. doi:10.1177/0049124111412714
27. Mitchell, G., Walker, L., & Monahan, J. (2011). Beyond context: Social facts as case-specific evidence. Emory Law Journal, 60, 1109-1155.
28. Monahan, J., & Steadman, H. J. (1996) Violent storms and violent people: How meteorology can inform risk communication in mental health law. American Psychologist, 51, 931-938. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.51.9.931
29. Monahan, J. (2008). Structured risk assessment of violence. In R. Simon & K. Tardiff (Eds.), Textbook of violence assessment and management (pp. 17-33). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.
30. Monahan, J., Steadman, H. J., Appelbaum, P. S., Grisso, T., Mulvey, E. P., Roth, L. H., Silver, E. (2006). The classification of violence risk. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 24, 721-730. doi:10.1002/bsl.725
31. Monahan, J., & Walker, L. (2011). Twenty-five years of social science in law. Law and Human Behavior, 35, 72-82. doi:10.1007/s10979-009-9214-8
32. Monahan, J., & Wexler, D. B. (1978). A definite maybe: Proof and probability in civil commitment. Law and Human Behavior, 2, 37-42. doi:10.1007/BF01047500
33. Mossman, D., & Sellke, T. M. (2007). Avoiding errors about "margins of error." British Journal of Psychiatry, 191, 561. doi:10.1192/bjp.191.6.561
34. Oppenheimer, D. M., Meyvis, T., & Davidenko, N. (2009). Instructional manipulation checks: Detecting satisficing to increase statistical power. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 867-872. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009. 03.009
35. Oxford English Dictionary. (2011). Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
36. Paolacci, G., Chandler, J., & Ipeirotis, P. G. (2010). Running experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Judgment and Decision Making, 5, 411-419.
37. Peters, E., Vastfjall, D., Slovic, P., Mertz, K. C., Mazzocco, K., & Dickert, S. (2006). Numeracy and decision making. Psychological Science, 17, 407-413. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01720.x
38. Peters, E. (2008). Numeracy and the perception and communication of risk. In W. T. Tucker, S. Ferson, A. M. Finkel, & D. Slavin (Eds.) Strategies for risk communication: Evolution, evidence, experience (pp. 1-7). New York, NY: The New York Academy of Sciences.
39. Reyna, V. F., Nelson, W., Han, P., & Dieckmann, N. F. (2009). How numeracy influences risk comprehension and medical decision making. Psychological Bulletin, 135, 943-973. doi:10.1037/a001732
40. Schopp, R. F., & Quattrocchi, M. R. (1995). Predicting the present: Expert testimony and civil commitment. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 13, 159-181. doi:10.1002/bsl.2370130203
41. Scurich, N., & John, R. S. (2011). The effect of framing actuarial risk probabilities on involuntary commitment decisions. Law & Human Behavior, 35, 83-91. doi:10.1007/s10979-010-9218-4
42. Scurich, N., & John, R. S. (in press). A Bayesian approach to the group versus individual prediction controversy in actuarial risk assessment. Law & Human Behavior. doi:10.1007/s10979-011-9286-0
43. Skeem, J., & Monahan, J. (2011). Current directions in violence risk assessment. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 38-42. doi:10.1177/0963721410397271
44. Slobogin, C. (2007). Proving the unprovable: The role of law, science and speculation in adjudicating culpability and dangerousness. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
45. Slovic, P., Monahan, J., & MacGregor, D. (2000). Violence-risk assessment and risk communication: The effects of using actual cases, providing instruction, and employing probability versus frequency formats. Law and Human Behavior, 24, 271-296. doi:10.1023/A:1005595519944
46. Tversky, A., & Koehler, D. J. (1994). Support theory: A nonextensional representation of subjective probability. Psychological Review, 101, 547-567. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.101.4.547
47. Underwood, B. (1979). Law and the crystal ball: Predicting behavior with statistical inference and individualized judgment. Yale Law Journal, 88, 1404-1448.
48. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S., 131 S.Ct. 2541 (2011).
49. Yang, M., Wong, S., & Coid, J. (2010). The efficacy of violence prediction: A meta-analytic comparison of nine risk assessment tools. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 740-767. doi:10.1037/a0020473