Richard L. Wiener

Full Vita in PDF Format

Professor Wiener received his Ph.D. from the University of Houston and his Masters Degree in Legal Studies at UNL. He was professor of Psychology at Saint Louis University (1982- 2000) and most recently chair of the Department of Psychology at Baruch College, City University of New York. In 2002 Dr. Wiener joined the Law-Psychology Program (as director) and the Social Psychology Program at UNL. He is the former editor of Law and Human Behavior, the official journal of the American Psychology/Law Society (Division 41 of the APA). Dr. Wiener's research applies theories of social cognition to problems in legal decision-making. Among the topic areas he has investigated are perceptions of sexual harassment and jury decision making. Specifically, Dr. Wiener studies the role of generic prejudice in criminal cases and he studies how jurors reach capital murder decisions in assigning penalties. The National Science Foundation has funded and continues to fund this work. Currently, Dr. Wiener applies social cognitive theories of emotion, motivation, dual process of cognitive processing to explain how legal actors reach decisions relevant to law and policy. Other topics of investigation include the role of implicit attitude activation in generic prejudice, the role of emotions in jury judgments as they develop across the presentation of criminal cases, the role of mortality salience in death penalty judgments, and the role of counterfactual thinking in negligence judgments. Dr. Wiener teaches courses at UNL on behavioral sciences and the law and legal decision making.

Representative Publications
Wiener, R.L. & Richter, E. (in press). Symbolic hate: intention to intimidate, political Ideology, and group association. Law and Human Behavior.

Maeder, E. & Wiener, R.L, & Winter, R. (2007) Does a truck driver see what a nurse sees? The effects of occupation type on perceptions of sexual harassment, Sex Roles, 56, 801-810.

Wiener, R.L., Holtje, M., Winter, R.J., Cantone, J.A., Gross, K., & Block-Lieb, S. (2007). Consumer credit disclosure and anticipated emotion, Journal of Experimental Psychology (Applied), 13. 32-46.

Wiener, R.L., Bornstein, B.H., Schopp, R., & Willborn, S. (Eds.) (2007). Social Consciousness in Legal Decision Making: Psychological Perspectives. New York: Springer Press.

Wiener, R.L. (2007). Law and Everyday Decision-Making: Descriptive and Normative Models (2007). In Wiener, R.L., Bornstein, B.H., Schopp, R., & Willborn, S. (Eds.) Social Consciousness in Legal Decision Making: Psychological Perspectives. (pp. 3-34) New York: Springer Press.

Wiener, R.L., Bornstein, B.H., & Humke, A. (2006). Emotion and the law: A framework for inquiry. Law and Human Behavior, 30, 231-248.

Wiener, R.L., Arnot, L. Winter, R., & Redmond, B. (2006). Generic prejudice in the law: The case of sexual assault. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 28, 145-155.

Wiener, R.L., Holtje, M., Winter, R.J., Cantone, J.A., Block-Lieb, S. & Gross, K. (2006). Psychology and BAPCPA: Enhanced disclosure and emotion. Missouri Law Review, 71, 1003-1033.

Wiener, R.L., Voss, A.M., Winter, R.J., & Arnot, L. (2005). The more you see it, the more you know it: Memory accessibility and sexual harassment judgments. Sex Roles, 53, 807-820.

Wiener, R.L., Rogers, M., Winter, R., Hurt, L.E., Hackney, A., Kadela, K., Seib, H., Rauch, S., Warren, L., Morasco, B. (2004). Guided jury discretion in capital murder cases: The role of declarative and procedural knowledge. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 10(4), 516-576.

Wiener, R.L., Winter, R., Rogers, M., & Arnot, L. (2004). The Effects of Prior Workplace Behavior on Subsequent Sexual Harassment Judgments. Law and Human Behavior, 28, 1, 47-67.