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Courtroom Psychology Tests May Be Unreliable, Study Finds
Courts are not properly screening out unreliable psychological and IQ tests, allowing junk science to be used as evidence, researchers have concluded. Such tests can sway judges or juries and influence whether someone gets custody of a child or is eligible for bail or capital punishment. ... “There’s huge variability in the psychological tools now being admitted in U.S. courts,” said Tess Neal, an Arizona State University psychology professor and co-author of the study published Saturday in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest. “There’s a lot of stuff that looks like it’s junk and should be filtered out by the courts, but it’s not being filtered out," said Neal. ...
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California Considers Permitting Students Excused Mental Health Days
Parents, educators and clinicians are seeing an alarming increase in mental health problems among young people. Various national surveys show the rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide on the rise, but what to do about it is less clear. In July of 2019, Oregon passed a bill that allows students to take excused absences for mental health related issues. Students advocated for the bill, saying it would reduce stigma about mental health issues, and encourage young people to seek the treatment they need. Now, the California legislature is considering something similar.
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‘Reducing Stigma’: Could Mental Health Days Help California Students?
Students in California may soon have the option of taking a mental health day. Senate bill 849, written by the California state senator Anthony Portantino, would allow students time out of school to treat or attend to mental health needs without risk of being considered truant, an infraction that could lead to penalties for students and fines for parents. ... Dr Mark Reinecke, a clinical director and psychologist with the Child Mind Institute, is broadly supportive of the bill, which he said reduces stigma and encourages young people to seek help, something that could offer long-term benefits.
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The Verdict Is In: Courtrooms Seldom Overrule Bad Science
A new, multiyear study published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest finds that only 40% of the psychological assessment tools used in courts have been favorably rated by experts. [NEWS Feb. 15, 2020]
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How Fear Distorts Our Thinking About the Coronavirus
When it comes to making decisions that involve risks, we humans can be irrational in quite systematic ways — a fact that the psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman famously demonstrated with the help of a hypothetical situation, eerily apropos of today’s coronavirus epidemic, that has come to be known as the Asian disease problem. Professors Tversky and Kahneman asked people to imagine that the United States was preparing for an outbreak of an unusual Asian disease that was expected to kill 600 citizens.
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The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake
The scene is one many of us have somewhere in our family history: Dozens of people celebrating Thanksgiving or some other holiday around a makeshift stretch of family tables—siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, great-aunts. The grandparents are telling the old family stories for the 37th time. “It was the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen in your life,” says one, remembering his first day in America. “There were lights everywhere … It was a celebration of light! I thought they were for me.” ... This particular family is the one depicted in Barry Levinson’s 1990 film, Avalon, based on his own childhood in Baltimore.
