The Law and Social Psychology Research Group is the research laboratory of Nick Schweitzer at Arizona State University. The group conducts empirical research on issues related to the law and legal systems, particularly the rule of law and scientific evidence. Our research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the American Psychology-Law Society. We are currently collaborating on a large project funded by the National Institute of Justice, as well as a project for the MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Project.
On this page, you will find information about our group, including a description of our current research and information on how to join us. You can contact us at lsprg@asu.edu.
How should things like fairness, morals, and justice guide the overall structure of the law?
If a society possesses a set of formal laws that must be followed by everyone, the society is said to be "ruled by laws," or, stated another way, the society is under the "rule of law." We are attempting a systematic, empirical investigation of the rule of law. This program of research starts by investigating the following issues: Why do people follow laws? When is it justifiable to break laws? What makes a law "legitimate," and is it necessary to follow an illegitimate law? How do weaknesses at specific points of a system of laws affect the overall strength of the rule of law? We find that issues like fairness, justice, and morality have large effects on the answers to those questions.
Recent research on this topic:
Schweitzer, N.J., Saks, M.J., and Lovis-McMahon, D. (2009, November). Is the Rule of Law a Law of Rules? Judgments of Rule of Law Violations. Presentation to be delivered at the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA. [Download Paper from SSRN]
Gildar, N. and Schweitzer, N. (2008, April). Political Orientation, Religiosity, and the Justifiability of Law Violations. Poster presented at the meeting of the Western Psychological Association, Irvine, CA. [Download Poster - .pdf]
Schweitzer, N., Saks, M., Tingen, I., Lovis-McMahon, D., Cole, B., Gildar, N., and Fay, D. (2008, March). The Effect of Legal Training on Judgments of Rule of Law Violations. Poster to be presented at the 2008 American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Jacksonville, FL. [Download Poster - .pdf]
Schweitzer, N., Saks, M., Tingen, I. and Lovis-McMahon, D. (2008, February). The role of context in individuals’ preferences for procedural justice. Poster to be presented at the meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Albuquerque, NM. [Download Poster - .pdf]
Schweitzer, N., Sylvester, D. and Saks, M. (2007). Rule violations and the rule of law: A factorial survey of public attitudes. DePaul Law Review, 56, 615-638. [Download from SSRN]
How do jurors, judges, and lawyers deal with complicated scientific evidence?
Scientific evidence is growing in its complexity, and there is a great deal of concern that individuals within the legal system may not be able to understand such complex evidence. Our work in this area involves figuring out exactly how well jurors and others understand scientific evidence (including neuroscientific, forensic, epidemiological, physical and experimental evidence) and empirically testing the effectiveness of various techniques that seek to improve jurors' performance in these situations (e.g., jury education techniques, jury innovations, blue-ribbon or "special" juries).
Our research in this area typically involves mock-jury studies using written and multimedia trial materials on both college student and general-population samples.
Recent research on this topic:
Schweitzer, N., and Saks, M. (2009). The Gatekeeper Effect: The Impact of Judges' Admissibility Decisions on the Persuasiveness of Expert Testimony. Psychology, Public Policy and Law, 15, 1-18. [View Abstract]
Fay, D., Schweitzer, N. and Tingen, I. (2008, April). Jurors' Understanding of the Screening of Scientific Evidence. Poster presented at the meeting of the Western Psychological Association, Irvine, CA. [Download Poster - .pdf]
Schweitzer, N. J. and Saks, M. (2007). The CSI effect: Popular fiction about forensic science affects the public’s evaluations of real forensic science. Jurimetrics, 47, 357-364. [Download from SSRN]
Ravin, A. B., Cole, B., & Tingen, I. (2007, March). Jurors’ Understanding of Causal Relationships and Scientific Evidence. In “Psychology and Law” symposium, Psi Chi Arizona Undergraduate Research Convention , Flagstaff, AZ.
Law and Social Psychology Research Group