Further Readings
ADR and the vanishing trial [Special issue]. (2004, Summer).
Dispute Resolution Magazine, 10.
Brazil, W. A. (1985). Settling civil suits: Litigators’ views
about appropriate roles and effective techniques for
federal judges.Chicago: American Bar Association.
Conflict resolution in the field: Assessing the past, charting
the future [Special issue]. (2004, Fall–Winter). Conflict
Resolution Quarterly, 22.
Folberg, J., Milne, A. L., & Salem, P. (Eds.). (2004). Divorce
and family mediation: Models, techniques, and
applications. New York: Guilford.
Menkel-Meadow, C. J., Love, L. P., Schneider, A. K., &
Sternlight, J. R. (Eds.). (2005).Dispute resolution:
Beyond the adversarial model.New York: Aspen.
Wissler, R. L., & Dauber, B. (2005). Leading horses to water:
The impact of an ADR “confer and report” rule. Justice
System Journal, 26,253–272.
Wissler, R. L., & Dauber, B. (2007). Court-connected
arbitration in the Superior Court of Arizona: A study of its
performance and proposed rule changes. Journal of
Dispute Resolution 1, 65–100.AMBER ALERTSYSTEM
The AMBER Alert system was designed to help rescue
missing children. Law enforcement entities release
information about the child and the perpetrator through
public announcements on television, roadside signs,
and the Internet. Citizens are expected to remember the
information and report sightings to the police. Although
the system has not been well evaluated, a number of
social science methods used in other areas (e.g., eyewit-
ness memory research, bystander effect) may be applic-
able. Concerns have been raised that the program has
been overused by the authorities, who issue alerts in
nonserious cases, and that alerts are most “effective”
when relatively little threat is posed, such as when a
child is abducted by a parent.AMBER Alert and Social Science
The AMBER Alert system makes many assumptions
about human behavior that remain untested. The sys-
tem assumes that individuals have the ability to remem-
ber the information presented in the alert and to identify
the perpetrator or the child at a later time. Research on
cognitive load and exposure duration suggests that brief
messages presented while the recipient is busy (e.g.,driving a car) may not be acquired, although these
notions have not been tested with AMBER Alert
messages. Retention failure and memory reconstruc-
tion may also make it difficult to properly remember
the alert message. Retrieval problems, such as source
attribution errors, may also make it difficult for citizens
to fulfill their role in the AMBER Alert system.
Eyewitness memory research has indicated that indi-
viduals are not always able to recognize a face seen
before; this can be especially true for faces of another
race. These research techniques could be used to test
citizens’ ability to become informants.
Social influences and individual differences could
affect one’s willingness to report. Informants may feel
that they are too busy to get involved with an investiga-
tion, or they could decide that because other citizens
will report the sighting, there is no need for them to
report (i.e., the bystander effect). The people around
informants could doubt their memory, influencing them
not to report. On the other hand, the high severity of a
crime may make informants more likely to report.
Gender, race, and past experiences with the police have
also been shown to affect one’s willingness to help.
Although these studies were not conducted using
AMBER Alert as a framework, they may suggest
avenues for future study.
There is also concern that AMBER alerts will lead to
“AMBER fatigue,” a phenomenon in which individuals
stop paying attention to the alerts because they have
seen so many of them. There is also concern that the
great number of alerts could lead to a heightened level
of public fear and to perceptions that abductions are
more common than they actually are, as suggested by
research on the availability heuristic and social con-
struction of fear by the media. Alternately, the presence
of the AMBER Alert system could convince people that
the system is deterring abductions; this could lead to
a reduction in the perceived need for prevention
programs. Stories of abductions by strangers (which
AMBER Alert was designed to address) may lead to a
neglect of the more frequent problem of abductions by
family members. Counterfactual thinking and hindsight
bias can affect perceptions of the system: A rescue after
an alert was issued or a child’s death after a failure to
issue an alert may seem like inevitable outcomes, thus
bolstering the system’s perceived effectiveness.
Finally, AMBER alerts can affect perpetrators. It is
possible that alerts can deter criminals or encourage
them to return the child safely. It is, however, also pos-
sible that they will encourage copycat abductions by
publicity-seeking criminals. Seeing an alert could alsoAMBER Alert System——— 19A-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:41 PM Page 19