Christine M. Shea Adams (Chrissy)
University of Wyoming
Social Psychology, with an emphasis in Psychology and Law
Laramie, Wyoming
Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday 1:30 - 3:00pm and by appointment.
Biological Sciences Building, Room 124
Education:
B.A. from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, 2001
M.S. from the University of Wyoming, 2003
Currently I am in my 6th year and am working on my dissertation.
If you would like to see my complete vita please choose one of the following: Word
Advisor and Mentor: Marty Bourgeois, Ph.D. (now at Florida Gulf Coast University)
Lab Membership: Psychology and Law lab, and Social Psychology Lab
Research Interests: I am interested in research on the process of death qualification and how it affects decision making in capital murder trials and how juror decision making may be affected by the use of heuristics. I am also interested in jury decision making, specifically how different trial reforms (i.e., bifurcation, note taking, and early discussion) affect this decision making. Until now I have only looked at civil trials, but I would be interested in looking at the effects of different reforms on criminal trials as well (I have done this a little with the psychology and law lab). Finally, I am interested in Terror Management Theory (TMT) and how mortality salience may affect decision making in law related situations. To see the trailer for a documentary that includes interviews with the authors of TMT about the human fear of death click here.
Current Research: I am currently attempting to validate a new measure (death penalty attitudes scale) that may more accurately determine whether a prospective juror is in fact death qualified as opposed to using the current legal standards that are very vague in their questioning. This measure will more sensitively measure each individual's threshold for when to give the death penalty. I would also like to examine what personal characteristics are related to being death qualified. I would then like to take this information and examine how guilt and sentencing decisions differ individually and in groups (including time for the jury to deliberate) depending on whether the juror/jury is legally death qualified, actually death qualified (based on my measure) or mixed (groups only).
Courses Taught: I taught Research Methods in the summer of 2004 (to see the course syllabus choose one of the following: Word or PDF) and I taught Introductory Psychology this last spring (to see the course syllabus choose one of the following: Word or PDF) as well as Psychology and Law in the summer of 2005 and Spring of 2006 (to see the syllabus please choose one of the following: Word or PDF). Finally, I am teaching an Outreach, audio-teleconference class on Psychology and Law for the third time this fall (to see the course syllabus choose one of the following: Word).
Bourgeois, M.J., Nunez, N., Adams, C.M.S., Binder, D.M. (under review). Effects of Note taking and Early Discussion on Juror Reasoning, Applied Cognitive Psychology.
Sample Presentations:
Adams, C.M.S., Tang, C., Bourgeois, M.J., Waack, B.M., & Hatz, J.L. (2005, March). Further validation of the Death Penalty Attitudes Scale. Talk given at the annual meeting of the American Psychology-Law Society, San Diego, CA. (PDF)
Adams, C.M.S., & Bourgeois, M. (2004, March). The effects of
bifurcation and deliberation on jury damage awards when
injury severity is varied. Talk given at the annual meeting of the
American Psychology-Law Society, Scottsdale,
AZ. (For a
copy of my thesis please choose one of the following:
Word or
PDF.)
Adams, C.M.S., Perkins, J., & Bourgeois, M.J. (2003, June).
Validation of the death penalty attitudes scale. Poster
presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society,
Atlanta, GA. (PDF)
Adams, C.M.S., & Bourgeois, M.
(2002, May). Jury Instructions and the Use of Revision and
Bifurcation. Poster
presented at the annual
meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago,
Illinois. (PDF)
Adams, C.M.S., & Greene, E. (2002, March). Punitive Damage
Instructions: Making Jury Instructions More
Comprehensible. Poster
presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychology and Law
Society, Austin,
Texas. (PDF)
