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G. Daniel Lassiter

Research Area:
Social Judgment & Behavioral Decision Making

Specializations:
Social, Judgment and Decision Making

Contact Information:

Office: 251 Porter Hall

Phone: (740) 593-1063

E-mail: lassiter@ohio.edu

Research Interests:

Dr. Lassiter's main line of research centers on the problem of how people come to organize and comprehend the information contained in another person's ongoing stream of behavior. This is a question that is of fundamental importance to several areas of psychology, including social, cognitive, and clinical as well as to other disciplines such as sociology, communication, and political science whose focus is also concerned with issues related to the nature of social action and interaction. The overall goal of Lassiter's work, which has been funded by the National Science Foundation, is to further illuminate the nature of the behavior perception process and at the same time establish its prominent role in a variety of psychological phenomena.

Dr. Lassiter's interest in behavior perception has recently branched out into the study of decision-making in simulated juries. This research has also been funded with a grant from the National Science Foundation. Within the criminal justice system, there is a growing trend toward using videotape technology to record and present confession evidence. Videotaping confessions has the ostensible advantage of helping trial fact finders determine more objectively whether a confession was voluntary or coerced. However, the social-psychological literature on perceptual salience suggests that certain aspects of this process could inadvertently bias or prejudice judgments of voluntariness and guilt.

Consistent with this literature, Dr. Lassiter's research shows that, relative to other confession-presentation formats (e.g., audiotapes and transcripts), videotapes that are recorded with the focus on the confessor tend to produce judgments of greater voluntariness and guilt. In light of both a recent U. S. Supreme Court ruling stating that the improper use of involuntary confessions may in certain instances be considered "harmless error," and the fact that actual criminal interrogations are usually videotaped with the focus on the confessor, these findings have important legal implications. The real-world impact of Dr. Lassiter's research is demonstrated by the fact that it has already influenced New Zealand's national policy on the videotaping of police interrogations.

To learn more about our graduate training program in social psychology and to see exciting videos, go to:

http://homepage.mac.com/danlassiter/socialpsychology

Selected Publications:

Lassiter, G. D. (Ed.). (under contract).

Interrogations, confessions, and entrapment. New York: Kluwer Academic.

Lassiter, G.D. (2002).

Illusory causation in the courtroom. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 204-208.

Lassiter, G.D., Geers, A.L., Handley, I.M., Weiland, P. E., & Munhall, P.J., (2002).

Videotaped confessions and interrogations: A simple change in camera perspective alters verdicts in simulated trials. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 867-874.

Lassiter, G.D., Geers, A.L., Munhall, P.J., Ploutz-Snyder, R. J., & Breitenbecher, D. L. (2002).

Illusory causation: Why it occurs. Psychological Science, 13, 299-305.

Lassiter, G.D., Geers, A.L., Apple, K.J. (2002).

Communication set and the perception of ongoing behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 158-171.

Handley, I. M., & Lassiter, G. D., (2002).

Mood and information processing: When happy and sad look the same. Motivation and Emotion, 26, 223-255.

Geers, A. L., & Lassiter, G. D. (2002).

Effects of affective expectations on affective experience: The moderating role of optimism - pessimism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1026-1039.

Lassiter, G.D., Geers, A.L., Munhall, P.J., Handley, I.M., & Beers, M.J. (2001).

Videotaped confessions: Is guilt in the eye of the camera? Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 33, 189-254.

Lassiter, G.D., & Munhall, P. J. (2001).

The genius effect: Evidence for a nonmotivational interpretation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 37, 349-355.

Lassiter, G.D. (2000).

The relative contributions of recognition and search - evaluation processes to high-level chess performance: Comment on Gobet and Simon. Psychological Science, 11, 172-173.

Lassiter, G.D., Geers, A.L., Apple, K.J., & Beers, M.J. (2000).

Observational goals and behavior unitization: A reexamination. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 36, 649-659.

 

Recent Grants:

• Generalizability and mediation of the videotaped-confession bias. National Science Foundation. July 1996 - June 1999, $180,343. (Includes $10,440 in cost-sharing provided by Ohio University.)
• Bias and accuracy in the evaluation of videotaped confessions. Ohio Board of Regents Research Challenge Award, December 1993 - August 1995, $11,750.
• Causes and effects of variation in behavior perception. National Science Foundation, August 1989 - January 1992, $106,740.
• Causes and effects of variation in behavior perception. Ohio Board of Regents Research Challenge Award, August 1988 - July 1989, $15,000.
• Behavior perception and causal attribution. Ohio University Research Committee, July 1988 - June 1989, $4,385.

Some Recent or Upcoming Presentations:

Ratcliff, J.J., Lassiter, G.D., & Markman, K. D. (2003, May).

Pernicious perception: Is prejudice maintained in the level of analysis? Presented at the meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

Weiland, P. E., Lassiter, G. D. , & Lyle, M. (2003, February).

Effect of accountability on the perception of ongoing behavior. Presented at the meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Hollywood, CA.

Lassiter, G. D. (2002, May-June).

Videotaped confessions: Panacea or Pandora's Box? Presented as part of symposium entitled New Visual Technologies and Law: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives at the Law and Society meeting, Vancouver, Canada.

Courses Taught:

Undergraduate:
Social Psychology

Graduate:
Experimental Social Psychology; Social Perception and Cognition

Affiliations:

• American Psychological Association
• American Psychological Society
• Society of Experimental Social Psychology
• Society for Personality and Social Psychology

Graduate Students:

• Ian Handley
• Jennifer Ratcliff