Gerald Gaes - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Gerald Gaes
Supplemental Material, Appendix_2_23_2018 - Estimating the Distribution of Treatment Effects From Random Design Experiments
Supplemental Material, Appendix_2_23_2018 for Estimating the Distribution of Treatment Effects Fr... more Supplemental Material, Appendix_2_23_2018 for Estimating the Distribution of Treatment Effects From Random Design Experiments by William Rhodes and Gerald Gaes in Evaluation Review
A hypothetical evaluation question posits that a state introduced a reform intended to reduce inc... more A hypothetical evaluation question posits that a state introduced a reform intended to reduce incarceration for a targeted group of offenders. This paper discusses how the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) data might be used to investigate what that reform accomplished. Once a state introduces a reform, an evaluator can observe what happened following that introduction, but the evaluator cannot tell what would have happened had the state not introduced that reform. This paper is a discussion of selected quasi-experimental approaches that should be useful for dealing with the above evaluation question: pretest-posttest designs, difference-in-difference designs, difference-in-difference-in-differences designs, and synthetic control methods. While not an exhaustive list of evaluation strategies, this paper aims to emphasize the analysis of panel data derived from the NCRP. Disclaimer The Bureau of Justice Statistics funded this third-party repo...
Classifying Prisoner Returns
Justice Research and Policy, 2016
Scholars often use administrative corrections data to identify the reasons that offenders return ... more Scholars often use administrative corrections data to identify the reasons that offenders return to prison, though such data usually obscure more complex processes underlying the cause of a return. This article describes the procedural nuances that make it difficult to record prison return paths and discusses these limitations. We focus on data elements and recording practices commonly found in administrative databases and discuss whether and how researchers may use these data to reliably identify/classify returns. We provide empirical demonstrations of these arguments using publicly available data and conclude that more extensive data are often needed to accomplish this objective.
Criminology & Public Policy, 2018
ore than any other topic, mass incarceration is the preeminent public policy issue that reaches b... more ore than any other topic, mass incarceration is the preeminent public policy issue that reaches beyond our small community of criminologists. Aside from the large body of criminal justice scholarship devoted to this issue, it is a topic debated by politicians and policy makers and rehashed by pundits eager to advance a specific position. It is quintessential criminology touching on many domains both theoretical and practical-life-course research, public safety, justice, racial inequality, community cohesiveness, and state budgeting and finance decisions. The latter encompasses trade-offs between the funding of expensive prison resources and other state and federally funded social programs including higher education, welfare, and medical care. The National Research Council report by Travis, Western, and Redburn (2014) on mass incarceration highlighted collateral social costs including those to the offender's family, community, and the U.S. polity. Mass incarceration calls attention to a form of exceptionalism most Americans prefer not to brag about. We have been at or near the top of the rate of incarceration among the world's countries for many years. The Institute for Criminal Policy Research documents worldwide incarceration rates. Adding inmates in federal and state prisons as well as local jails, the United States had an incarceration rate of 666 per 100,00 in 2015, which was down from its peak of 755 per 100,000 in 2008 . We are currently second to the Republic of Seychelles, an archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean with 100,00 residents and 799 people in custody. We are still an outlier among modern nation states . The downward trend in U.S. incarceration since 2008 is much less steep than the growth that drove it to its unprecedented levels. To drive prison
Criminology & Public Policy, 2018
Research SummaryIn this study, we use both a regression discontinuity design and an instrumental ... more Research SummaryIn this study, we use both a regression discontinuity design and an instrumental variable identification strategy to examine the relationship between prison length of stay and recidivism among a large sample of federal offenders. We capitalize on the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines structure to apply these strong inference, quasi‐experimental approaches. We find that average length of stay can be reduced by 7.5 months with a small impact on recidivism. We also examine whether there is treatment heterogeneity. We find that length‐of‐stay effects do not vary by criminal history, offense seriousness, sex, race, and education level.Policy ImplicationsWe show that reducing the average length of stay for the federal prison population by 7.5 months could save the Bureau of Prisons 33,203 beds once the inmate population reaches steady state. This back‐of‐the‐envelope estimate reveals how reductions in time served can have a much larger impact on prison reductions compared with di...
Crime & Delinquency, 2017
Prison growth has primarily been measured as a prevalence over time. We propose cohort-specific s... more Prison growth has primarily been measured as a prevalence over time. We propose cohort-specific supplemental measures: incidence based on the age of first adult admission into prison, and cumulative incidence, based on the proportion of people who will be imprisoned during their lifetime. We present a new estimation method using administrative data. Prior research derived estimates from inmate surveys. The main advantages of this new method are that estimates can be updated every year with little cost and minimal imputation. We present results showing that we have likely reached an inflection point in the growth of cumulative incidence, and the ratio between Blacks and Whites is declining although the disparity is still large—roughly 4.5 to 1.
Criminal Justice Review, 2018
Background:Reporting estimates of length of stay in prison populations is a common objective in c... more Background:Reporting estimates of length of stay in prison populations is a common objective in corrections research. Researchers and prison administrators use these estimates for many different purposes. These include projecting future prison operational and capacity needs, describing levels of punitiveness among states, and explaining the drivers of prison growth or decline. Because of their critical importance to so many dimensions of corrections and criminal justice, researchers have compared the merits of various methods to estimate prison length of stay.Objective:This article revisits a survival-based approach for estimating length of stay originally described in Patterson and Preston and uses historical prison data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics National Corrections Reporting Program to compare this method to alternatives. It also describes and tests the merits of extending this method to parametric frameworks.Method:Using 20 years of data in nine states, we model esti...
An analysis of perdeiied altruism was conducted . . within the framelibrk of Kelley's (1973) attr... more An analysis of perdeiied altruism was conducted . . within the framelibrk of Kelley's (1973) attributional model. In a 2 by 2 factorial, design, the consistency and distinctiveness of a donor's prosocial lxistor were manipulated. Subjects were ptovided with written scenarios d picting the work of a voluntary 'welfare organization aidingthe Iderly. Subsequent evaluations of the donor-actors on the altruism dimension revealed thAt there is. a direct 'relationship of consistency and an inverse relationship of distinctiveness with the attribution of altruism. (Author) ---, 40,
Journal of Experimental Criminology, 2016
Objectives This study examines the effect of prison versus community sanctions on recommitment to... more Objectives This study examines the effect of prison versus community sanctions on recommitment to prison and compares two levels of community supervision, community control (house arrest) and probation, evaluating whether the findings are contingent on the type of matching methods used in the analysis. Methods Logistic regression was conducted on unmatched and matched samples. Exact, coarsened exact, and radius-matching procedures were used to create a selection on observables design. Matching variables included current offense, demographics, criminal history, supervision violations, and a rich set of Florida Sentencing Guidelines information culled from an official scoring sheet. Florida judges use this instrument to sentence offenders within the framework of the state determinate sentencing system. The results show that with exact matching, there is no effect of imprisonment on recommitment, while the other procedures suggest a specific deterrent effect of imprisonment. All four analysis methods showed that offenders under community control are more likely to reoffend than those under normal probation. Analyses between the matched and unmatched prison observations demonstrate that the matched set of prisoners is composed of offenders who have less extensive criminal records and less serious conviction offenses than unmatched offenders regardless of the matching algorithm.
Impression management and the putative arousal properties of cognitive dissonance [microform] /
ABSTRACT
Data on over 7,000 offenders were collected to evaluate the impact of industrial work experience ... more Data on over 7,000 offenders were collected to evaluate the impact of industrial work experience and vocational and apprenticeship training on in-prison and post-release outcomes. Prior research on prison training outcomes failed to find any significant training effects. Related research on the economic conditions faced by ex-offenders has demonstrated the difficult conditions under which these offenders seek employment. Because the training effects may be subtle, we developed a large sample to evaluate the prison training programs. Furthermore, because we could not randomly assign inmates to the training conditions, we tried to control for selection bias by using a statistical matching procedure which modeled the training program selection process. The results of the evaluation demonstrated significant and substantively meaningful training effects both on in-prison and post-prison outcome measures.
Social Psychology and Cumulative Knowledge
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1981
162 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN make an attempt to severely test a theory and it s... more 162 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN make an attempt to severely test a theory and it stands up, we have gained greater confidence in it or (as Popper says) its "truth-like" (verisimilar) qualities. Piatt (1964) has described a cumulative method of ...
Evaluation of getting ready
PsycEXTRA Dataset
Effects of Effort on Attributed Intent Andperceived Aggressiveness
Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1976
ABSTRACT
Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 2003
This study examines gender similarities and differences in background characteristics, the effect... more This study examines gender similarities and differences in background characteristics, the effectiveness of treatment, and the predictors of post-release outcomes among incarcerated drug-using offenders. The sample of 1,842 male and 473 female treatment and comparison subjects came from a multi-site evaluation of prison-based substance abuse treatment programs. Three-year follow-up data for recidivism and post-release drug use were analyzed using survival analysis methods. Despite the greater number of life problems among women than men, women had lower three-year recidivism rates and rates of post-release drug use than did men. For both men and women, treated subjects had longer survival times than those who were not treated. There were both similarities and differences with respect to gender and the other predictors of the two post-release outcomes. Differences in background characteristics and in factors related to post-release outcomes for men and women suggest the plausibility of gender-specific paths in the recovery process.
Journal of Social Issues, 1977
That body of social psychological literature typically subsumed under the concept of aggression i... more That body of social psychological literature typically subsumed under the concept of aggression is reinterpreted as a compendium of different processes and functional relationships including equity, reciprocity, and self‐defense. An evaluation of this literature leads to the conclusion that social psychological researchers have concentrated their efforts in studying retaliatory behaviors whereas “aggression” commonly refers to harm doing initiated by some transgressor. A reconceptualization based on the concept of coercive power leads to a clearer understanding of harm‐doing actions and allows researchers to classify and distinguish initiated harm‐doing actions from those that are retaliatory. Having made this distinction, a set of propositions related to the initiation of harm doing isspelled out, and the implications for the social control of such behavior are considered.
Verbal accounts and attributions of social motives
Journal of Research in Personality, 1983
... Accounts and Attributions of Social Motives .TAMES T. TEDESCHI State University of New York a... more ... Accounts and Attributions of Social Motives .TAMES T. TEDESCHI State University of New York at Albany CATHERINE A. RIORDAN University of ... Austin (1969) and Scott and Lyman (1968) have provided an analysis of such accounts and have dichotimized them into two types ...
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1986
An experiment was performed to evaluate the arousal mechanism proposed by dissonance theory as me... more An experiment was performed to evaluate the arousal mechanism proposed by dissonance theory as mediating attitude change in the forced compliance situation. In a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design subjects were given choice or no choice (2) to write counterattitudinal essays, and were asked about their attitudes either before or after performance (2) on either a simple or complex task (2). The results showed that subjects performed best on the simple task when they had been given choice, and attitude assessment occurred after task performance. Attitude change was manifested in all of the choice conditions but in none of the no choice conditions. A factor analysis of self-report data supported the hypothesis that concern about responsibility for negative consequences is associated with attitude change. However. there was no indication of any relationship between arousal, attitude change, and task performance. 0 1986 Academic press. Inc. A fundamental assumption of Festinger's (1957) theory of cognitive dissonance is that inconsistent cognitions produce tension or negative arousal, which causes an individual to engage in activities to reduce the aversive state. A number of studies have attempted to provide evidence that arousal is the mechanism underlying so-called "dissonance effects." The study reported herein was part of the dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. at SUNYA by the senior author. Requests for reprints should be directed to Gerald G.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1978
Two studies were performed to assess the interpersonal concerns of subjects in the forced complia... more Two studies were performed to assess the interpersonal concerns of subjects in the forced compliance paradigm. The first study counterposed dissonance and impression management theory predictions in a 2 x 2 design by varying the public versus private nature of the counterattitudinal behavior and by assessing attitudes with the usual pencil-and-paper method or with a bogus pipeline technique designed to create strong pressures toward sincere reporting. Attitude change occurred only in the Public/Pencil-and-Paper condition and thus supported an interpersonal or impression management interpretation. The second study examined the effect of measuring the critical attitude a second time in the mode not experienced in the first assessment. This three-group design (Pencil-and-Paper/Bogus Pipeline, Bogus Pipeline/Pencil-and-Paper, Control) demonstrated that attitude change occurred only in the Pencil-and-Paper/Bogus Pipeline condition and was maintained on the second assessment when measured by the bogus pipeline. A common-factor analysis of the secondary measures in the second study demonstrated that the Pencil-and-Paper/Bogus Pipeline subjects reported a great deai of negative arousal such as embarrassment and guilt, while the subjects in the Bogus Pipeline/Pencil-and-Paper condition reported feeling manipulated and constrained. The findings of both studies were interpreted as consistent with impression management theory. We would like to thank the following people for acting as experimenters: William
Evaluation Review, 2001
In an evaluation of prison-based residential drug treatment programs, the authors use three diffe... more In an evaluation of prison-based residential drug treatment programs, the authors use three different regression-based approaches to estimating treatment effects. Two of the approaches, the instrumental variable and the Heckman approach, attempt to minimize selection bias as an explanation for treatment outcomes. Estimates from these approaches are compared with estimates from a regression in which treatment is represented by a dummy variable. The article discusses the advantage of using more than one method to increase confidence in findings when possible selection bias is a concern. Three-year outcome data for 2,315 federal inmates are used in analyses where the authors separately examine criminal recidivism and relapse to drug use for men and women. Statistical tests lead the authors to conclude that treatment reduces criminal recidivism and relapse to drug use. The treatment effect was largest when the inference was based on the Heckman approach, somewhat smaller when based on t...
Supplemental Material, Appendix_2_23_2018 - Estimating the Distribution of Treatment Effects From Random Design Experiments
Supplemental Material, Appendix_2_23_2018 for Estimating the Distribution of Treatment Effects Fr... more Supplemental Material, Appendix_2_23_2018 for Estimating the Distribution of Treatment Effects From Random Design Experiments by William Rhodes and Gerald Gaes in Evaluation Review
A hypothetical evaluation question posits that a state introduced a reform intended to reduce inc... more A hypothetical evaluation question posits that a state introduced a reform intended to reduce incarceration for a targeted group of offenders. This paper discusses how the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) data might be used to investigate what that reform accomplished. Once a state introduces a reform, an evaluator can observe what happened following that introduction, but the evaluator cannot tell what would have happened had the state not introduced that reform. This paper is a discussion of selected quasi-experimental approaches that should be useful for dealing with the above evaluation question: pretest-posttest designs, difference-in-difference designs, difference-in-difference-in-differences designs, and synthetic control methods. While not an exhaustive list of evaluation strategies, this paper aims to emphasize the analysis of panel data derived from the NCRP. Disclaimer The Bureau of Justice Statistics funded this third-party repo...
Classifying Prisoner Returns
Justice Research and Policy, 2016
Scholars often use administrative corrections data to identify the reasons that offenders return ... more Scholars often use administrative corrections data to identify the reasons that offenders return to prison, though such data usually obscure more complex processes underlying the cause of a return. This article describes the procedural nuances that make it difficult to record prison return paths and discusses these limitations. We focus on data elements and recording practices commonly found in administrative databases and discuss whether and how researchers may use these data to reliably identify/classify returns. We provide empirical demonstrations of these arguments using publicly available data and conclude that more extensive data are often needed to accomplish this objective.
Criminology & Public Policy, 2018
ore than any other topic, mass incarceration is the preeminent public policy issue that reaches b... more ore than any other topic, mass incarceration is the preeminent public policy issue that reaches beyond our small community of criminologists. Aside from the large body of criminal justice scholarship devoted to this issue, it is a topic debated by politicians and policy makers and rehashed by pundits eager to advance a specific position. It is quintessential criminology touching on many domains both theoretical and practical-life-course research, public safety, justice, racial inequality, community cohesiveness, and state budgeting and finance decisions. The latter encompasses trade-offs between the funding of expensive prison resources and other state and federally funded social programs including higher education, welfare, and medical care. The National Research Council report by Travis, Western, and Redburn (2014) on mass incarceration highlighted collateral social costs including those to the offender's family, community, and the U.S. polity. Mass incarceration calls attention to a form of exceptionalism most Americans prefer not to brag about. We have been at or near the top of the rate of incarceration among the world's countries for many years. The Institute for Criminal Policy Research documents worldwide incarceration rates. Adding inmates in federal and state prisons as well as local jails, the United States had an incarceration rate of 666 per 100,00 in 2015, which was down from its peak of 755 per 100,000 in 2008 . We are currently second to the Republic of Seychelles, an archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean with 100,00 residents and 799 people in custody. We are still an outlier among modern nation states . The downward trend in U.S. incarceration since 2008 is much less steep than the growth that drove it to its unprecedented levels. To drive prison
Criminology & Public Policy, 2018
Research SummaryIn this study, we use both a regression discontinuity design and an instrumental ... more Research SummaryIn this study, we use both a regression discontinuity design and an instrumental variable identification strategy to examine the relationship between prison length of stay and recidivism among a large sample of federal offenders. We capitalize on the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines structure to apply these strong inference, quasi‐experimental approaches. We find that average length of stay can be reduced by 7.5 months with a small impact on recidivism. We also examine whether there is treatment heterogeneity. We find that length‐of‐stay effects do not vary by criminal history, offense seriousness, sex, race, and education level.Policy ImplicationsWe show that reducing the average length of stay for the federal prison population by 7.5 months could save the Bureau of Prisons 33,203 beds once the inmate population reaches steady state. This back‐of‐the‐envelope estimate reveals how reductions in time served can have a much larger impact on prison reductions compared with di...
Crime & Delinquency, 2017
Prison growth has primarily been measured as a prevalence over time. We propose cohort-specific s... more Prison growth has primarily been measured as a prevalence over time. We propose cohort-specific supplemental measures: incidence based on the age of first adult admission into prison, and cumulative incidence, based on the proportion of people who will be imprisoned during their lifetime. We present a new estimation method using administrative data. Prior research derived estimates from inmate surveys. The main advantages of this new method are that estimates can be updated every year with little cost and minimal imputation. We present results showing that we have likely reached an inflection point in the growth of cumulative incidence, and the ratio between Blacks and Whites is declining although the disparity is still large—roughly 4.5 to 1.
Criminal Justice Review, 2018
Background:Reporting estimates of length of stay in prison populations is a common objective in c... more Background:Reporting estimates of length of stay in prison populations is a common objective in corrections research. Researchers and prison administrators use these estimates for many different purposes. These include projecting future prison operational and capacity needs, describing levels of punitiveness among states, and explaining the drivers of prison growth or decline. Because of their critical importance to so many dimensions of corrections and criminal justice, researchers have compared the merits of various methods to estimate prison length of stay.Objective:This article revisits a survival-based approach for estimating length of stay originally described in Patterson and Preston and uses historical prison data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics National Corrections Reporting Program to compare this method to alternatives. It also describes and tests the merits of extending this method to parametric frameworks.Method:Using 20 years of data in nine states, we model esti...
An analysis of perdeiied altruism was conducted . . within the framelibrk of Kelley's (1973) attr... more An analysis of perdeiied altruism was conducted . . within the framelibrk of Kelley's (1973) attributional model. In a 2 by 2 factorial, design, the consistency and distinctiveness of a donor's prosocial lxistor were manipulated. Subjects were ptovided with written scenarios d picting the work of a voluntary 'welfare organization aidingthe Iderly. Subsequent evaluations of the donor-actors on the altruism dimension revealed thAt there is. a direct 'relationship of consistency and an inverse relationship of distinctiveness with the attribution of altruism. (Author) ---, 40,
Journal of Experimental Criminology, 2016
Objectives This study examines the effect of prison versus community sanctions on recommitment to... more Objectives This study examines the effect of prison versus community sanctions on recommitment to prison and compares two levels of community supervision, community control (house arrest) and probation, evaluating whether the findings are contingent on the type of matching methods used in the analysis. Methods Logistic regression was conducted on unmatched and matched samples. Exact, coarsened exact, and radius-matching procedures were used to create a selection on observables design. Matching variables included current offense, demographics, criminal history, supervision violations, and a rich set of Florida Sentencing Guidelines information culled from an official scoring sheet. Florida judges use this instrument to sentence offenders within the framework of the state determinate sentencing system. The results show that with exact matching, there is no effect of imprisonment on recommitment, while the other procedures suggest a specific deterrent effect of imprisonment. All four analysis methods showed that offenders under community control are more likely to reoffend than those under normal probation. Analyses between the matched and unmatched prison observations demonstrate that the matched set of prisoners is composed of offenders who have less extensive criminal records and less serious conviction offenses than unmatched offenders regardless of the matching algorithm.
Impression management and the putative arousal properties of cognitive dissonance [microform] /
ABSTRACT
Data on over 7,000 offenders were collected to evaluate the impact of industrial work experience ... more Data on over 7,000 offenders were collected to evaluate the impact of industrial work experience and vocational and apprenticeship training on in-prison and post-release outcomes. Prior research on prison training outcomes failed to find any significant training effects. Related research on the economic conditions faced by ex-offenders has demonstrated the difficult conditions under which these offenders seek employment. Because the training effects may be subtle, we developed a large sample to evaluate the prison training programs. Furthermore, because we could not randomly assign inmates to the training conditions, we tried to control for selection bias by using a statistical matching procedure which modeled the training program selection process. The results of the evaluation demonstrated significant and substantively meaningful training effects both on in-prison and post-prison outcome measures.
Social Psychology and Cumulative Knowledge
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1981
162 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN make an attempt to severely test a theory and it s... more 162 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN make an attempt to severely test a theory and it stands up, we have gained greater confidence in it or (as Popper says) its "truth-like" (verisimilar) qualities. Piatt (1964) has described a cumulative method of ...
Evaluation of getting ready
PsycEXTRA Dataset
Effects of Effort on Attributed Intent Andperceived Aggressiveness
Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1976
ABSTRACT
Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 2003
This study examines gender similarities and differences in background characteristics, the effect... more This study examines gender similarities and differences in background characteristics, the effectiveness of treatment, and the predictors of post-release outcomes among incarcerated drug-using offenders. The sample of 1,842 male and 473 female treatment and comparison subjects came from a multi-site evaluation of prison-based substance abuse treatment programs. Three-year follow-up data for recidivism and post-release drug use were analyzed using survival analysis methods. Despite the greater number of life problems among women than men, women had lower three-year recidivism rates and rates of post-release drug use than did men. For both men and women, treated subjects had longer survival times than those who were not treated. There were both similarities and differences with respect to gender and the other predictors of the two post-release outcomes. Differences in background characteristics and in factors related to post-release outcomes for men and women suggest the plausibility of gender-specific paths in the recovery process.
Journal of Social Issues, 1977
That body of social psychological literature typically subsumed under the concept of aggression i... more That body of social psychological literature typically subsumed under the concept of aggression is reinterpreted as a compendium of different processes and functional relationships including equity, reciprocity, and self‐defense. An evaluation of this literature leads to the conclusion that social psychological researchers have concentrated their efforts in studying retaliatory behaviors whereas “aggression” commonly refers to harm doing initiated by some transgressor. A reconceptualization based on the concept of coercive power leads to a clearer understanding of harm‐doing actions and allows researchers to classify and distinguish initiated harm‐doing actions from those that are retaliatory. Having made this distinction, a set of propositions related to the initiation of harm doing isspelled out, and the implications for the social control of such behavior are considered.
Verbal accounts and attributions of social motives
Journal of Research in Personality, 1983
... Accounts and Attributions of Social Motives .TAMES T. TEDESCHI State University of New York a... more ... Accounts and Attributions of Social Motives .TAMES T. TEDESCHI State University of New York at Albany CATHERINE A. RIORDAN University of ... Austin (1969) and Scott and Lyman (1968) have provided an analysis of such accounts and have dichotimized them into two types ...
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1986
An experiment was performed to evaluate the arousal mechanism proposed by dissonance theory as me... more An experiment was performed to evaluate the arousal mechanism proposed by dissonance theory as mediating attitude change in the forced compliance situation. In a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design subjects were given choice or no choice (2) to write counterattitudinal essays, and were asked about their attitudes either before or after performance (2) on either a simple or complex task (2). The results showed that subjects performed best on the simple task when they had been given choice, and attitude assessment occurred after task performance. Attitude change was manifested in all of the choice conditions but in none of the no choice conditions. A factor analysis of self-report data supported the hypothesis that concern about responsibility for negative consequences is associated with attitude change. However. there was no indication of any relationship between arousal, attitude change, and task performance. 0 1986 Academic press. Inc. A fundamental assumption of Festinger's (1957) theory of cognitive dissonance is that inconsistent cognitions produce tension or negative arousal, which causes an individual to engage in activities to reduce the aversive state. A number of studies have attempted to provide evidence that arousal is the mechanism underlying so-called "dissonance effects." The study reported herein was part of the dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. at SUNYA by the senior author. Requests for reprints should be directed to Gerald G.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1978
Two studies were performed to assess the interpersonal concerns of subjects in the forced complia... more Two studies were performed to assess the interpersonal concerns of subjects in the forced compliance paradigm. The first study counterposed dissonance and impression management theory predictions in a 2 x 2 design by varying the public versus private nature of the counterattitudinal behavior and by assessing attitudes with the usual pencil-and-paper method or with a bogus pipeline technique designed to create strong pressures toward sincere reporting. Attitude change occurred only in the Public/Pencil-and-Paper condition and thus supported an interpersonal or impression management interpretation. The second study examined the effect of measuring the critical attitude a second time in the mode not experienced in the first assessment. This three-group design (Pencil-and-Paper/Bogus Pipeline, Bogus Pipeline/Pencil-and-Paper, Control) demonstrated that attitude change occurred only in the Pencil-and-Paper/Bogus Pipeline condition and was maintained on the second assessment when measured by the bogus pipeline. A common-factor analysis of the secondary measures in the second study demonstrated that the Pencil-and-Paper/Bogus Pipeline subjects reported a great deai of negative arousal such as embarrassment and guilt, while the subjects in the Bogus Pipeline/Pencil-and-Paper condition reported feeling manipulated and constrained. The findings of both studies were interpreted as consistent with impression management theory. We would like to thank the following people for acting as experimenters: William
Evaluation Review, 2001
In an evaluation of prison-based residential drug treatment programs, the authors use three diffe... more In an evaluation of prison-based residential drug treatment programs, the authors use three different regression-based approaches to estimating treatment effects. Two of the approaches, the instrumental variable and the Heckman approach, attempt to minimize selection bias as an explanation for treatment outcomes. Estimates from these approaches are compared with estimates from a regression in which treatment is represented by a dummy variable. The article discusses the advantage of using more than one method to increase confidence in findings when possible selection bias is a concern. Three-year outcome data for 2,315 federal inmates are used in analyses where the authors separately examine criminal recidivism and relapse to drug use for men and women. Statistical tests lead the authors to conclude that treatment reduces criminal recidivism and relapse to drug use. The treatment effect was largest when the inference was based on the Heckman approach, somewhat smaller when based on t...