Statistical Designs & Analyses -- Likely Schedule of Class Events for Exam #1

University of Nebraska – Lincoln

The relationship of situated social cognition factors and consent to search perceptions in innocent suspects

The results of this research were surprising, especially in relation to the room size variable and the differences across dependent variables. To begin, we hypothesized that gender differences would appear across the various conditions, and this turned out to be the case. While the main effect of gender on freedom to refuse consent was only marginally significant (p=.08), pairwise comparisons did reveal small differences between genders in specific conditions. In fact, it seems as though the SSC manipulations did little to nothing in relation to females’ freedom to refuse consent scores, as there were no differences between cell means, regardless of condition. For men, however, there were numerous differences: in the small room, males gave higher ratings in the lit condition than in the dark; in the lit condition, males gave higher ratings in the small room than in the large; and there were main effects for both lighting and room size that matched these patterns. These findings may be related to the unequal sample sizes between the two genders. Further research should investigate these gender differences to determine if this is the case or another factor is playing a role to moderate or mediate the relationship. Gender may be acting as a proxy.

Next, we hypothesized room size would be related to both voluntariness of consent and freedom to refuse consent, such that those in the larger room would give higher ratings of both voluntariness and freedom to refuse. Cesario and colleagues (2010) found that, in confrontational situations, “fight” responses are more likely in enclosed spaces, while “flight” responses are more likely in open fields. This finding, however, did not appear in our research. There was a main effect for room size such that higher ratings of freedom to refuse consent were given in the small room than in the large room, opposite of that which we hypothesized. It is not clear why this relationship materialized and, again, it was only descriptive for the males. Additional studies can examine room size in other situations to see how and if the effects replicate.

Because there has been little to no research on the influence of lighting as an SSC manipulation, we hypothesized that the lit condition would be analogous to the open area condition in Cesario and colleagues’ study (2010), with higher ratings of freedom to refuse consent being related to the lit condition. The effects of lighting did follow this hypothesized pattern, though they were then conflicting with the effects of room size. Again, there was no effect for females, but there was a main effect for lighting for males (with higher ratings in the lit condition). This effect was descriptive in the small room; there was no difference by lighting condition in the large room. This was also surprising. Brightness was balanced across room conditions with differing light bulb wattage, so the total output of light did not vary with room size in that regard.

Finally, we hypothesized that those in the lit and large room condition would give the highest ratings for both dependent variables, so that the two-way interaction between the SSC variables and freedom to refuse consent would yield a larger effect than the other two-way interactions. This was indeed the case, though the F-test was just larger than the gender by lighting interaction. Again, though, the effect was only partially in the hypothesized direction: the small and lit room yielded the highest ratings of freedom to refuse consent. Overall, the main effect of lighting was the strongest effect in the analysis (F=6.22, p=.01).

We anticipated that the relationships would be similar between the independent variables and each dependent variable. It had been assumed that “voluntariness of consent” and “freedom to refuse consent” were similar enough to yield analogous results. However, this was not the case. Although nearly every effect significantly related to the former outcome variable, very few related to the latter. While the three-way interaction was the second largest effect for freedom to refuse consent, it had no relationship to voluntariness of consent. For this reason, age was exploratorily investigated, too. The resultant four-way interaction between gender, room size, lighting condition, and age was in fact significant. Apart from this effect, only the two-way interactions between gender and room size and gender and lighting were significant. While the former analyses demonstrated the relationships that SSC variables can have with decision perceptions, the voluntariness of consent analyses lean toward the importance of the demographic variables.

Interestingly, there continued to be no differences in ratings of voluntariness between conditions within the large room condition. In the small and lit room, there were differences between age and gender: older males gave higher ratings than younger males and younger females gave higher ratings than older females. These findings may speak to processing differences between males and females or may be due to the age cutoffs we used in discriminating between older and younger students. The distribution is roughly even between younger (18-19, likely underclassmen) and older (20-24, likely upperclassmen) students. Additional analyses using other age groups or through a continuous variable and ANCOVA may add to the findings presented here.

There was again an effect for lighting for males in the small room, but it is now limited just to those males in the older condition. This group may have also been driving the effect in the freedom to refuse consent interaction. No other effects were found with voluntariness of consent as the dependent variable. As previously stated, we had assumed that these outcome variables were of relatively equal valence, but that appears not to be the case. As such, vocabulary is another factor that may need to be taken into account, as it relates to the justice system. The independent variables are included herein to discuss their relationship to perceptions of a search request to help inform courts what safeguards ought to be in place to protect their constituents against unlawful searches and seizures. However, the differences between “voluntariness” and “freedom to refuse” may attest that not just the judicial branch, but also the legislative branch has a role in dictating consent validity. The vernacular used in legislation pertaining to searches may alter perceptions of such search requests and, in turn, play a role in litigation related to the legality of search requests. Thus, it must also be included in the “totality of the circumstances.”

Future initiatives should acquire a more diverse and balanced sample; the sample used here lacked equality in both race and gender, categories with groups that likely differ in important ways. Other SSC variables should be included and tested in innovative ways to add to the literature and further examine how environmental influences relate to decision-making and perceptions of such decisions. Likewise, other outcome variables may yield different results, as shown here. The wording of the variables may be important and weighed appropriately. Finally, the results of this research show that certain search request characteristics may be more important than others may and such interpretations may vary by group. Thus, all, and likely others, should be considered when evaluating the nature of a search request.