To examine how stress affects cognitive functioning, individual differences in trait vulnerability (punishment sensitivity) and state reactivity (negative affect) to social evaluative threat were examined during concurrent reinforcement learning. Lower trait-level punishment sensitivity predicted better reward learning and poorer punishment learning; the opposite pattern was found in more punis...

The American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (AAPL) and other medical organizations have not taken a position on the abolition of capital punishment because of a long-standing tradition of remaining neutral on "nonmedical" societal issues that are highly divisive. It is the authors' contention that taking a stand on vital social issues that are clearly in the public interest is wholly consist...

The American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) stance on the psychological maturity of adolescents has been criticized as inconsistent. In its Supreme Court amicus brief in Roper v. Simmons (2005), which abolished the juvenile death penalty, APA described adolescents as developmentally immature. In its amicus brief in Hodgson v. Minnesota (1990), however, which upheld adolescents’ right to se...

Though we have abolished the death penalty, we have done next to nothing about developing a rational alternative method for dealing with the crime of murder. Life imprisonment, as such, is no better than a makeshift substitute, for it is based on precisely the same legal rationale: namely, that because murderers are, by definition, extremely culpable and extremely dangerous, they deserve to be ...

On the basis of K. Stenner's (2005) authoritarian dynamic theory, it was hypothesized that the number of death sentences and executions would be higher in more threatened conservative states than in less threatened conservative states, and would be lower in more threatened liberal states than in less threatened liberal states. Threat was based on state homicide rate, violent crime rate, and non...

Because the death penalty is the ultimate penalty, the question of whether guilty persons are being fairly convicted and appropriately sentenced claims the attention of the public and legal communities alike. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 87 people have been released from death row, wrongfully convicted of capital murder. 2 In January of 2000, Republican and pro-death penalty ...

A substantial minority (35%) of the Dutch population is in favor of capital punishment. In this paper, it is argued that in a staunchly abolitionist country such as The Netherlands, the existence and perseverance of such support can be better understood and explained by conceiving of capital punishment support in attitudinal terms as part of a law and order syndrome. Death penalty attitudes are...

It has been part of the role of medical organizations in Western nations to develop position statements on various sociopolitical issues. Both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association have established position statements related to social policy, including capital punishment. In 2001, AAPL endorsed a moratorium on capital punishment. Recent calls for AAPL to end...