Cognitive Bias in Forensic Mental Health Assessment: Evaluator Beliefs About Its Nature and Scope

Zapf, P. A., Kukucka, J., Kassin, S. M., & Dror, I. E.
Psychology, Public Policy, & Law

Abstract

Decision-making of mental health professionals is influenced by irrelevant information (e.g., Murrie, Boccaccini, Guarnera, & Rufino, 2013). However, the extent to which mental health evaluators acknowledge the existence of bias, recognize it, and understand the need to guard against it, is unknown. To formally assess beliefs about the scope and nature of cognitive bias, we surveyed 1,099 mental health professionals who conduct forensic evaluations for the courts or other tribunals (and compared these results with a companion survey of 403 forensic examiners, reported in Kukucka, Kassin, Zapf, & Dror, 2017). Most evaluators expressed concern over cognitive bias but held an incorrect view that mere willpower can reduce bias. Evidence was also found for a bias blind spot (Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002), with more evaluators acknowledging bias in their peers’ judgments than in their own. Evaluators who had received training about bias were more likely to acknowledge cognitive bias as a cause for concern, whereas evaluators with more experience were less likely to acknowledge cognitive bias as a cause for concern in forensic evaluation as well as in their own judgments. Training efforts should highlight the bias blind spot and the fallibility of introspection or conscious effort as a means of reducing bias. In addition, policies and procedural guidance should be developed in regard to best cognitive practices in forensic evaluations.

Closing statements:

What is clear is that forensic evaluators appear to be aware of the issue of bias in general, but diminishing rates of perceived susceptibility to bias in one’s own judgments and the perception of higher rates of bias in the judgments of others as compared with oneself, underscore that we may not be the most objective evaluators of our own decisions. As with the forensic sciences, implementing procedures and strategies to minimize the impact of bias in forensic evaluation can serve to proactively mitigate against the intrusion of irrelevant information in forensic decision making. This is especially important given the courts’ heavy reliance on evaluators’ opinions (see Zapf, Hubbard, Cooper, Wheeles, & Ronan, 2004), the fact that judges and juries have little choice but to trust the expert’s self-assessment of bias (see Kassin et al., 2013), and the potential for biased opinions and conclusions to cross-contaminate other evidence or testimony (see Dror, Morgan, Rando, & Nakhaeizadeh, 2017). More research is necessary to determine the specific strategies to be used and the various recommended means of implementing those strategies across forensic evaluations, but the time appears to be ripe for further discussion and development of policies and guidelines to acknowledge and attempt to reduce the potential impact of bias in forensic evaluation.

The article is here.

What swamp? Lobbyists get ethics waivers to work for Trump

Associated Press
Originally posted March 9, 2017

President Donald Trump and his appointees have stocked federal agencies with ex-lobbyists and corporate lawyers who now help regulate the very industries from which they previously collected paychecks, despite promising as a candidate to drain the swamp in Washington.

A week after his January 2017 inauguration, Trump signed an executive order that bars former lobbyists, lawyers and others from participating in any matter they lobbied or otherwise worked on for private clients within two years before going to work for the government.

But records reviewed by The Associated Press show Trump's top lawyer, White House counsel Don McGahn, has issued at least 24 ethics waivers to key administration officials at the White House and executive branch agencies.

Though the waivers were typically signed by McGahn months ago, the Office of Government Ethics disclosed several more on Wednesday.

One allows FBI Director Chris Wray "to participate in matters involving a confidential former client." The three-sentence waiver gives no indication about what Wray's conflict of interest might be or how it may violate Trump's ethics order.

Asked about the waivers, Lindsay Walters, a White House spokeswoman, said, "In the interests of full transparency and good governance, the posted waivers set forth the policy reasons for granting an exception to the pledge."

The article is here.

Universities Rush to Roll Out Computer Science Ethics Courses

Natasha Singer
The New York Times
Originally posted February 12, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

“Technology is not neutral,” said Professor Sahami, who formerly worked at Google as a senior research scientist. “The choices that get made in building technology then have social ramifications.”

The courses are emerging at a moment when big tech companies have been struggling to handle the side effects — fake news on Facebook, fake followers on Twitter, lewd children’s videos on YouTube — of the industry’s build-it-first mind-set. They amount to an open challenge to a common Silicon Valley attitude that has generally dismissed ethics as a hindrance.

“We need to at least teach people that there’s a dark side to the idea that you should move fast and break things,” said Laura Norén, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Data Science at New York University who began teaching a new data science ethics course this semester. “You can patch the software, but you can’t patch a person if you, you know, damage someone’s reputation.”

Computer science programs are required to make sure students have an understanding of ethical issues related to computing in order to be accredited by ABET, a global accreditation group for university science and engineering programs. Some computer science departments have folded the topic into a broader class, and others have stand-alone courses.

But until recently, ethics did not seem relevant to many students.

The article is here.

Dealing with Racist Patients

Kimani Paul-Emile, Alexander K. Smith, Bernard Lo, and Alicia Fernández
N Engl J Med 2016; 374:708-711

Here is an excerpt:

Beyond these general legal rules, when patients reject physicians on the basis of their race or ethnic background, there is little guidance for hospitals and physicians regarding ways of effectively balancing patients’ interests, medical personnel’s employment rights, and the duty to treat. We believe that sound decision making in this context will turn on five ethical and practical factors: the patient’s medical condition, his or her decision-making capacity, options for responding to the request, reasons for the request, and effect on the physician (see flow chart). It’s helpful for physicians to consider these factors as they engage in negotiation, persuasion, and (in some cases) accommodation within the practical realities of providing effective care for all patients.

The patient’s medical condition and the clinical setting should drive decision making. In an emergency situation with a patient whose condition is unstable, the physician should first treat and stabilize the patient. Reassignment requests based on bigotry may be attributable to delirium, dementia, or psychosis, and patients’ preferences may change if reversible disorders are identified and treated. Patients with significantly impaired cognition are generally not held to be ethically responsible.

The article is here.

The brain as artificial intelligence: prospecting the frontiers of neuroscience

Fuller, S.
AI & Soc (2018).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-018-0820-1

Abstract

This article explores the proposition that the brain, normally seen as an organ of the human body, should be understood as a biologically based form of artificial intelligence, in the course of which the case is made for a new kind of ‘brain exceptionalism’. After noting that such a view was generally assumed by the founders of AI in the 1950s, the argument proceeds by drawing on the distinction between science—in this case neuroscience—adopting a ‘telescopic’ or a ‘microscopic’ orientation to reality, depending on how it regards its characteristic investigative technologies. The paper concludes by recommending a ‘microscopic’ yet non-reductionist research agenda for neuroscience, in which the brain is seen as an underutilised organ whose energy efficiency is likely to outstrip that of the most powerful supercomputers for the foreseeable future.

The article is here.

More Religious Leaders Challenge Silence, Isolation Surrounding Suicide

Cheryl Platzman Weinstock
npr.org
Originally posted February 11, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Until recently, many religious leaders were not well-prepared to talk about suicide with their congregants. Now some clergy have become an important part of suicide prevention.

"Where there's faith, there's hope, and where there's hope, there's life," says David Litts, co-leader of the Faith Communities Task Force of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention.

Arnold also leads that task force. "If someone dies from heart disease, for instance, or in an accident, they may wonder where God is, but when someone dies by suicide, a whole lot of other questions get raised," she says. "When you can't talk about this in church, then it feels like God can't talk about it either."

But in her church, she says, there isn't shame surrounding suicide. During the pastoral prayer, for instance, she says she lifts up congregants dealing with cancer, heart disease or mental health issues. "It's a way of signaling to people this is a safe place to talk about such things and be honest about them."

The article is here.

Polluted Morality: Air Pollution Predicts Criminal Activity and Unethical Behavior

Jackson G. Lu, Julia J. Lee, Francesca Gino, Adam D. Galinsky
Psychological Science 
First Published February 7, 2018

Abstract

Air pollution is a serious problem that affects billions of people globally. Although the environmental and health costs of air pollution are well known, the present research investigates its ethical costs. We propose that air pollution can increase criminal and unethical behavior by increasing anxiety. Analyses of a 9-year panel of 9,360 U.S. cities found that air pollution predicted six major categories of crime; these analyses accounted for a comprehensive set of control variables (e.g., city and year fixed effects, population, law enforcement) and survived various robustness checks (e.g., balanced panel, nonparametric bootstrapped standard errors). Three subsequent experiments involving American and Indian participants established the causal effect of psychologically experiencing a polluted (vs. clean) environment on unethical behavior. Consistent with our theoretical perspective, results revealed that anxiety mediated this effect. Air pollution not only corrupts people’s health, but also can contaminate their morality.

The research is here.

If you cannot get to the article, you can download it from here.

The Squishy Ethics of Sex With Robots

Adam Rogers
Wired.com
Originally published February 2, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Most of the world is ready to accept algorithm-enabled, internet-connected, virtual-reality-optimized sex machines with open arms (arms! I said arms!). The technology is evolving fast, which means two inbound waves of problems. Privacy and security, sure, but even solving those won’t answer two very hard questions: Can a robot consent to having sex with you? Can you consent to sex with it?

One thing that is unquestionable: There is a market. Either through licensing the teledildonics patent or risking lawsuits, several companies have tried to build sex technology that takes advantage of Bluetooth and the internet. “Remote connectivity allows people on opposite ends of the world to control each other’s dildo or sleeve device,” says Maxine Lynn, a patent attorney who writes the blog Unzipped: Sex, Tech, and the Law. “Then there’s also bidirectional control, which is going to be huge in the future. That’s when one sex toy controls the other sex toy and vice versa.”

Vibease, for example, makes a wearable that pulsates in time to synchronized digital books or a partner controlling an app. We-vibe makes vibrators that a partner can control, or set preset patterns. And so on.

The article is here.

The Strange Order of Things: why feelings are the unstoppable force

John Banville
The Guardian
Originally posted February 2, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

“Feelings have not been given the credit they deserve as motives, monitors, and negotiators of human cultural endeavours.” In claiming simplicity, it is possible the author is being a mite disingenuous. The tone in which he sets out his argument is so carefully judged, so stylistically calm and scientifically collected, that most readers will be lulled into nodding agreement. Yet a moment’s thought will tell us that we conduct our lives largely in contradiction of his premise, and for the most part deal with each other, and even with ourselves, as if we were pure spirit accidentally and inconveniently shackled to half a hundredweight or so of forked flesh.

“Feelings, and more generally affect of any sort and strength,” Damasio writes, “are the unrecognised presences at the cultural conference table.” According to him, the conference began among the bacteria, which – who? – even in their “unminded existence … assume what can only be called a sort of ‘moral attitude’”. In support of his claim, he adduces the various ways in which bacteria behave that bear a striking resemblance to human social organisation. The implication is, then, that “the human unconscious literally goes back to early life-forms, deeper and further than Freud or Jung ever dreamed of”. Damasio’s argument is that we are directly descended not only from the apes, but from the earliest wrigglers at the bottom of the primordial rock pool.

The keyword throughout the book is homeostasis, of which he offers a number of definitions, the clearest of which is the earliest, and which he favours enough to set it in italics: homeostasis is the force – the word seems justified – that ensures that “life is regulated within a range that is not just compatible with survival but also conducive to flourishing, to a projection of life into the future of an organism or a species”.

The article is here.