Adjudication frequently turns on contested issues of fact (e.g., whether a battered woman who claims she killed in self-defense reasonably perceived an immediate threat of death), which must be determined either by juries or judges. CCP researchers are conducting experimental studies to determine how cultural values influence adjudicatory factual determinations and public reactions to the same.
What do members of the public think about the benefits and risks of nanotechnology? How will their views evolve as they learn more? How can goverment promote informed public deliberations about this novel science? Project members are conducting experimental studies to answer these questions.
Supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant SES 0621840) and the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund at Yale Law School, Project members have been carrying out a series of experiments to identify the contributions that various psychological and social processes make to the phenomenon of cultural cognition.
Who fears guns, who fears gun control, and why? Project members use the cultural theory of risk to answer these questions.
Americans are culturally polarized on a range of societal risks--from global warming to domestic terrorism, from school shootings to vaccination of school-age girls for HPV. Reporting the results of surveys and experiments involving some 5,000 Americans, the study identifies the causes of this condition and steps that can be taken to counteract it. [download study]
Funded by the National Science Foundation, Project members conducted an 1800-person national survey that found that cultural worldviews better predicted perceptions of various risks than did any other individual characteristic.
