Research

Social sources of crime (mis)perceptions

Is crime salience a reflection of the crime rate, or manipulated by political rhetoric and media coverage of crime?
My coauthors and I use time series and hierarchical age-period-cohort (HAPC) analyses to investigate if the public salience of crime reflects the crime rate, or is manipulated by the political rhetoric and media coverage of crime. We find that crime salience varies mostly at the period level; crime salience trends are parallel across demographic, socioeconomic, and partisan groups; and crime salience trends within every population subgroup the crime rate does not exert a significant effect. This first-authored paper has been published in Criminology.

Does media consumption cause the public to believe that crime is always worsening?
My coauthors and I have evaluated the longstanding claim that media is responsible for the public's misunderstanding that the crime rate is always increasing. We use ordinary least squares, fixed effects, and dynamic panel models to analyze data from the American National Election Studies. We find that online news consumption is not related to crime trend perceptions in any of these models. Although newspaper and TV news consumption are related to crime trend perceptions in pooled OLS models, the relationship is nonsignificant in other models. The results question the cultivation effect of media that has been shown from previous sectional studies. This first-authored paper has been published in Deviant Behavior.

What is the relationship between media consumption and international students' fear of crime?
International students bring in multifold benefits to the education host countries. Fear of crime may harm the students' mental and physical health and undermine their educational achievements. Drawing on an original sample of 398 international students in the U.S., I find that international students are more fearful in the U.S. than in their home countries. Results from structural equation models (SEM) suggest that attention paid to crime news is positively related to fear in the U.S., through perceived victimization risk. Exposure to non-U.S. social media (e.g., WeChat and Weibo) is positively related to respondents’ fear of crime, whereas exposure to U.S. social media (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) is not related to fear of crime. This sole-authored paper has been published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

information treatment

Does exposure to accurate information about the crime rate change crime trend perceptions and willingness to offend?
Economists and psychologists have found that people tend to follow descriptive norms (what others do). Accordingly, the view that an increasing number of people engage in crime may increase the accept- ability of criminal choices to individuals. Utilizing a randomized experiment embedded in an original online survey, I find that though perceptions of rising crime trends and willingness to offend are not directly related, exposure to accurate crime information reduces willingness to offend among respondents who initially perceive rising crime trend in the short term. This sole-authored paper has been published in the Journal of Crime and Justice.

Does exposure to accurate information about the crime rate change crime trend perceptions and support for punitive criminal justice policies?
Public punitiveness is closely related to the expansion of the U.S. penal system. In a sole-authored study, I investigate if exposure to accurate crime information reduces anger about and fear of crime and thereby reduces public punitiveness, and the interconnections between crime trend perceptions, negative emotions, and punitive attitudes. Results show that perceptions of rising crime trends were related to punitiveness both directly and indirectly through anger about crime. Exposure to accurate crime information did not alleviate anger about or fear of crime, but, surprisingly, increased support for punitive criminal justice policies. This paper is published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology.

GENDERED Public opinion and
ATTITUDES TOWARDS sexual assault

What factors influence the public's attitudes towards #MeToo victims and offenders?
In this sole-authored study, I analyze data from a national factorial survey and investigate what factors influence the public's perceived credibility of alleged sexual assault victims and punitiveness towards sexual assault offenders. Results show disclosing the offense immediately to the public, reporting to the police, and having a witness are positively related to punitive attitudes towards the offender, via increased perceived credibility of the victim. The results highlight the importance of understanding extralegal factors in shaping stereotypic views about sexual assault in the #MeToo era. The paper has been published in Violence Against Women.

Is the gender gap in fear of crime narrowing or widening?
In this co-authored study, my coauthors and I examine the gendered reaction to victimization threats from 1973 to 2016 using the General Social Survey and the hierarchical age-period-cohort-characteristics model. Results suggest the gender gap is narrowing across time with a gradual decline among women who report feeling afraid to walk alone at night. The period-level change in violent crime rates and the cohort differences in gender ideology have significant impact on the gender-specific reaction to the threats of victimization. The macro-level variables explain some variance in the gender gap across time. The study has been published in The Sociological Quarterly.

PUBLIC STIGMA about corrections AND Reentry

Is compassion the flip side of punitiveness?
In a Journal of Experimental Criminology publication, my co-authors and I embedded two experimental vignettes to assess support for vaccination priorities and personal protective equipment (PPE) for in-person visitation using a national sample. Results show that consistent with dominant exclusionary symbolic aims, respondents showed strong preferences for non-prisoner groups in facilitating safe in-person visits (in long-term care facilities) and vaccine priorities (to prison guards). Inclusionary symbolic aims were less clear when examining risk from vaccine side effects or helping vulnerable populations (the elderly). High cost reduced support for compassionate policy.

What factors influence public opinion about hiring people with criminal records?
In an ongoing mixed-methods project, I am collaborating with a colleague and developing a national survey experiment and qualitative interviews with professionals working at career centers to examine under what conditions the public supports or opposes hiring people with criminal records.

Does morality predict public stigma towards people with criminal records?
In an ongoing project, I am collaborating with two colleagues to examine the relationship between morality and stigmatized attitudes towards people with criminal records. The study uses the theoretical framework of redemptive violence and moral beliefs in evil. This study is supported by funding from Bridgewater State University and Rutgers University.

Polarized Public opinion about Protests and Policing

Does public opinion differ towards protestors and police officers involved in ideologically polarized protests ?
In this co-authored study published at Socius, my coauthor and I investigated public support for government repression of protests following incidents of violence and harm. Using two factorial vignette experiments embedded in a national Qualtrics survey, we examined whether partisan bias characterized public preferences for repressive government responses to intentional violence or incidental harm occurring at protests. We also examined whether violence or harm severity, or violence against or harm to police, influenced the degree of partisan bias in public responses. The results indicated partisan bias in support of police repression and punishment preferences and, to a lesser extent, legal repression. Members of the public preferred more repressive responses to political opponents and less repressive responses to political allies. Partisan bias in preferences for punishment was also heightened when a police officer was the target of intentional violence.

PUBLIC Opinion about Immigrants and Punishment

Is public opinion about immigration and punishment discriminatory and selective?
In a complete sole-authored study that is currently under review, I use a factorial survey and two national samples to examine if public opinion about immigration and punishment is discriminatory and selective based on immigrants' country of origin and legal status. The study is based on interdisciplinary theories including group threat and contact theory, stereotype amplification theory, self-categorization theory and group position model, The study is supported by funding from US Department of Education.

Is cross-group friendship related to less perceived criminal threat of immigrants and less negative attitudes toward immigrants to the United States?
In a sole-authored publication at International Criminal Justice Review, I use intergroup contact theory and an American adult sample to tests if cross-group friendship with foreign-born immigrants may reduce negative immigration attitudes both directly, and indirectly by lowering perceived criminal threat of immigrants. Results from regression analyses showed that perceived criminal threat was positively related to negative immigration attitudes. Cross-group friendship was directly related to less perceived criminal threat and less negative immigration attitudes. However, results from mediation analyses showed that cross-group friendship did not further reduce negative immigration attitudes indirectly via lowered perceived criminal threat.

Survey methodology

How to measure stigmatized attitudes towards people with criminal records?
In a first-authored publication in Criminal Justice and Behavior, my co-authors and I develop and test a multidimensional public stigma scale, which measures the public's stigmatized attitudes towards people with prison records. We examine the factor structure and dimensionality of the scale using a Qualtrics Panel sample of U.S. adults (N = 1,216) and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, which show that 17 of the 20 proposed scale items produce a four-factor structure, including danger/distrust, dehumanization, dispositional crime attributions, and social/emotional distance. We assess construct validity by testing the relationship between public stigma and theoretical antecedents and expected support for policy outcomes. Results show that public stigma is positively related to belief in evil and racial resentment and negatively related to personal and vicarious arrest experiences. It is also positively related to support for disenfranchisement and punitive policies and negatively related to support for rehabilitative policies.

Is data quality similar or different across online survey platforms?
I am collaborating with a colleague and use experimental methods to investigate data quality on MTurk and Lucid. Specifically, we investigate how respondents to attention check questions and bidirectional index questions. This study is supported by funding from the Bridgewater State University.

AND MORE

I am always happy to collaborate and work with a team. If you are interested in collaboration or have any questions about my published and ongoing projects, please feel free to send me an email (lshi@bridgew.edu).

Thank you!