{"id":547,"date":"2023-04-07T18:25:23","date_gmt":"2023-04-07T22:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.psychlabs.ryerson.ca\/template1\/?page_id=547"},"modified":"2025-10-09T14:04:59","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T18:04:59","slug":"research","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/psychlabs.torontomu.ca\/pljlab\/research\/","title":{"rendered":"Research"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/h3>

Wrongful convictions occur when a person is convicted of a crime that they did not commit. Our lab studies some of the causes of wrongful convictions as well as some stigmatizing outcomes for those who are falsely accused or exonerated. Several subtopics are presented below.<\/span><\/p>

False Accusations
<\/span><\/span>We are interested in how damaging a false accusation may be for the presumption of innocence, particularly for disliked crimes (e.g., child abuse, domestic violence). We investigate how stigmatizing it is to be accused of a crime, how early this stigma begins, and whether it erodes the presumption of innocence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Incentivized Witnesses
<\/span><\/span>Criminal cases may involve jailhouse informants or accomplices, who are given a reduced sentence, deal, or other privilege in exchange for incriminating testimony.\u00a0 Judges must warn juries about relying on their testimony without other evidence, and we are studying the effectiveness of these cautions at offsetting the damaging impact of informant testimony.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>

Right to Silence
<\/span><\/span>This stream of work will look at how observers view accused persons who invoke their right to remain silent during an interrogation and how it may relate to perceptions of guilt and credibility. We are also investigating how the outcome of the case may affect perceptions of invoking rights, as they may be faulted for waiving or invoking their right to silence depending on whether they were charged.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>

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Stranger Sexual Harassment\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>

Stranger sexual harassment occurs when a person receives unsolicited sexual communication from a person they do not know. It can occur at street level (e.g., catcalls) or online (e.g., dickpics). We study the nature and prevalence of this behaviour, how it might target intersectional identities, and how the victim’s response to the harassment might inform our perception of its offensiveness.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Male Survivors of Sexual Assault and Intimate Partner Violence
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Male victims are understudied as victims of IPV and sexual violence. We are studying the prevalence of sexual harassment experienced men and teenaged boys, as well as markers for resilience in youth exposed to family violence. We are also interested in the experiences of male survivors who are minoritized through racial identity and queer identities.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Moral Prejudice\u00a0<\/h3>

Prejudice towards an outgroup may be related to perceived differences in moral beliefs between the self and that group. Where prejudice is based in moral differences, prejudice reduction initiatives will likely fail, as people may not feel they are prejudiced toward the group but a particular aspect of that group. We investigate the degree to which feelings of moral differences might predict bias and whether we may use this to develop more effective intervention strategies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Hate Crimes<\/h3>

Hate crimes occur when a victim is targeted due to their race, religion, sexual orientation, age, disability status, or other protected social identity. These crimes are also thought of as “message crimes” in that they harm not only the immediate victim but also their entire social group, sending the message that they are unwanted and unsafe. Hate crimes typically cause more harm to victims than similar, non-hate based offences, as they target the victim’s core identity. They can also create layers of harm that are felt by members of other groups who have faced discrimination (“in terrorem” effects). Our lab has looked at the victim experience of hate crime as well as lay perceptions of hate crime and subtle expectations that may be placed on victims of hate.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS Wrongful convictions occur when a person is convicted of a crime that they did not commit. Our lab…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":196,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-547","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychlabs.torontomu.ca\/pljlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychlabs.torontomu.ca\/pljlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychlabs.torontomu.ca\/pljlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychlabs.torontomu.ca\/pljlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychlabs.torontomu.ca\/pljlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":97,"href":"https:\/\/psychlabs.torontomu.ca\/pljlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1671,"href":"https:\/\/psychlabs.torontomu.ca\/pljlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/547\/revisions\/1671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychlabs.torontomu.ca\/pljlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychlabs.torontomu.ca\/pljlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}