Four decades of the journal Law and Human Behavior: a content analysis

Abstract

Although still relatively young, the journal Law and Human Behavior (LHB) has amassed a publication history of more than 1300 full-length articles over four decades. Yet, no systematic analysis of the journal has been done until now. The current research coded all full-length articles to examine trends over time, predictors of the number of Google Scholar citations, and predictors of whether an article was cited by a court case. The predictors of interest included article organization, research topics, areas of law, areas of psychology, first-author gender, first-author country of institutional affiliation, and samples employed. Results revealed a vast and varied field that has shown marked diversification over the years. First authors have consistently become more diversified in both gender and country of institutional affiliation. Overall, the most common research topics were jury/judicial decision-making and eyewitness/memory, the most common legal connections were to criminal law and mental health law, and the most common psychology connection was to social-cognitive psychology. Research in psychology and law has the potential to impact both academic researchers and the legal system. Articles published in LHB appear to accomplish both.

Appendix

Risk assessment	Included anything about predicting future violence or dangerousness. This category may have included use of specific risk assessment tools (e.g., SAVRY) or factors predicting risk more generally. If an article discussed risk assessment in terms of more specific population, such as sex offenders or psychopathy, then both categories were coded
Competency and insanity	Included anything related to assessing competency (in both criminal and civil domains) or insanity. This category also included use or validation of specific assessment tools (e.g., Mac-CAT). If an article discussed clinical assessment of psychopathy (or sex offenders), then both clinical assessment and psychopathy (or sex offenders) were coded. If an article included a jury decision-making study where a primary focus was on the defendant’s mental state or mental health, then both competency and insanity, and jury decision-making were coded
Civil commitment	Included topics related to civil commitment
Criminal offending and recidivism	Included anything related to criminal offending in general or research examining recidivism/reoffending
Police and investigations	Included topics related to investigation and police behavior more generally. This category included topics such as forensic evidence/science, criminal profiling, investigative interviewing, and consenting to a search. If the article also specifically examined Miranda warnings, we also coded Miranda warnings separately
Lie/deception detection	Included articles on both expert and laypersons abilities to detect lies, as well as polygraph testing
Confessions and interrogations	Included articles specifically examining confessions, false confessions, and interrogation techniques
Eyewitness/memory	Included anything related to lineup identification, memory, eyewitness confidence, perceptions of eyewitnesses, and earwitnesses
Court and trial procedures	Included articles that related to specific processes within the courts, as well as the effects of certain court matters such as change of venue or effects of joinder
Jury or judicial decision-making	Included articles with jurors, juries, or judges making decisions. Within this category, a second category was coded that related more specifically to the type of decisions made. For instance, if the study was about death-qualified jurors, then jury/judicial decision-making and death penalty were coded. If the study involved perceptions of attorney behavior, then jury/judicial decision-making and the court and trial procedures was coded. If the study involved the effects of eyewitness testimony on juries, then jury/judicial decision-making and eyewitness memory were both coded. To examine whether there were differences for civil jury decisions and criminal, we also coded for whether the study specifically examined Civil Damages. We also coded for studies that specifically examined pre-trial publicity
Sentencing and pleas	Included articles about sentencing offenders, such as factors relating to sentencing and punishment. This variable also included plea bargaining. We coded anything related to the death penalty separately under Death Penalty
Alternatives to court	Included articles focused on mediation, arbitration, other alternative dispute resolutions, or problem-solving courts
Corrections	Included any articles that focused on institutional corrections (e.g., prisons, jails) and community corrections (e.g., probation)
Psychopathy	Included content that had anything to do with psychopathy, treatment of psychopathy, or assessment of psychopathy
Sex offenders	Included content that had anything to do with sex offenders or treatment of sex offenders
Mentally ill offenders and psychiatric patients	Included topics such as treatment of mentally ill offenders, perceptions of people with mental illness, or issues in general mental health law. If an article was specifically about the mental health and prison/jail or probation, then both mentally ill offenders and psychiatric patients, and corrections were coded
Victims and trauma	Included anything related to victims (e.g., rape, trauma). If the article discussed police interaction with victims, then both victims and police interactions were coded. We coded anything related to child maltreatment and domestic violence into two additional variables, respectively
Experts’ roles	Included topics related to various experts relevant to psychology and law including expert witnesses, advocates, clinicians, lawyers or psychology law/legal education. If an article included discussion on experts testifying about a particular area (e.g., expert witnesses testifying about eyewitness memory), then the substantive area was also coded (e.g., eyewitness/memory). This also included ethical issues for researchers including informed consent and clinician’s duty to report (i.e., Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California 1976)
Race/ethnicity and gender	This category was selected if the study included race/ethnicity or gender as a primary variable of interest. This often included a study with a primary area of interest (e.g., police and investigations, eyewitness memory) and the effects of race or gender within that area. This category also included studies such as discrimination based on gender or race. Sexual harassment was coded as a separate variable
Juvenile justice	Included anything related to juvenile criminal law or juvenile offenders. This category did not include youth as witnesses, victims, and other non-criminal settings such as custody disputes
Family issues	Included issues related to divorce, custody, family relationships, minors’ rights to privacy, and youths’ right to consent (in non-criminal settings)
Procedural justice	Included any articles that specifically examined procedural justice (i.e., perceptions of legal institutions or legal actors under procedural justice theory)
Law and policy	Although public policy can be a catch-all category, every effort was made to stay within public policy defined by Kilpatrick (2000) “as a system of laws” (e.g., traffic law issues), “regulatory measures” (e.g., medical field regulations, vaccines), “or legal system courses of actions” (e.g., wrongful conviction compensation) (p. 1). This category also included more specific analysis of statutes, non-criminal Constitutional issues such as speech, religion, or voting rights. Criminal Constitutional issues were coded within the more specific area and not within public policy (e.g., consenting to search was coded within police interactions). Issues related to discrimination were coded within race/ethnicity gender and not within public policy
General psychology and law	An article was coded under general psychology and law if it was a general review or discussion of psychology and law, related to teaching of psychology and law, discussed an over-arching theory as it applied to psychology and law, discussed empirical methods in general (i.e., does not include empirical methods applied to a specific area such as eyewitnesses or juries), issues related to sharing data or data confidentiality, or applied to broad area such as the courts or use of the law