Research Interests and Approach | Annabelle Frazier, Ph.D., LPC-S

My Research Interests & Approach

At heart, I am a decision-making scientist. I am forever learning about the motives, pressures, and environments underlying people's choices... particularly when those choices have serious consequences for them and for others. Inspired by psychology's rich experimental traditions, my own practice background, and a developmental orientation, I see individual decisions as part of a larger system or process, with cumulative influences that shape people's interpretation of events, their perception of what's possible, and their impulses to act. But these systems are extremely complex, and often impossible to capture in a single study. My research combines observations on real-world people and decisions from administrative datasets, with experimental projects that test possible explanations, causes, and effects, incrementally building towards an understanding of these systems, and the most influential components within them.

Some Current Questions and Projects

1.

How do judges and psychologists distinguish delusional thinking from fringe ideology in Sovereign Citizen cases?

Using federal court records for cases in which competency to stand trial was at issue for a Sovereign Citizen defendant, I am working with colleagues to identify the behavioral and legal factors that judges and experts use to make competency decisions. This work was recently presented at SCJA and AP-LS. A paper on this work is currently under review.

2.

How do prisoner interactions with parole board members influence the decision to grant release? And do these decisions predict how parolees fare?

Recently, Louisiana passed legislation nearly abolishing discretionary parole release. Yet, parole had been relatively rare in Louisiana in recent years... Using a year's worth of hearing recordings and administrative data, my students and I are working to answer these and related questions.

3.

What can be learned about accuser motivations and dynamics influencing verifiably-false allegations of sexual violence, in records of exonerees?

Using a combination of public sources (from the National Registry of Exonerations, media coverage, prior research, and litigation), we are coding cases in which a false sexual assault allegation was made, to better understand whether common motivations and situational dynamics may underlie these false complaints. Presentations on this project are scheduled at SCJA.

Students: Want to Develop Research Skills?

I am currently recruiting undergraduate and graduate students to assist in several research projects. Southern Miss Students who commit to a minimum of one semester of work on a project can...

Earn Course Credit (CJ 492)
Receive training in developing, producing, and presenting research
Have opportunities to present projects at conferences and publish research
Get one-on-one mentoring for graduate school applications, career planning, etc.
Build research skills and experience towards work in one of the best-compensated occupations in our field.

Interested? email using your Southern Miss account or use the link in your syllabus to book a time to chat!

Choose-Your-Own-Adventure (CYOA) Experiments

Current work using the CYOA paradigm is ongoing. It includes a physiological study to measure the arousal generated by this approach, as well as new applications to learning (see a paper on this below) and to student sexual misconduct. Stay tuned for more on these projects!

Learn More About The CYOA

My Published Work

Innovation in traditional and online criminal justice ethics courses: Integrating un-grading, choose-your-own-adventure style role plays, and real-world cases to promote learning. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 2024.
Love and relationship satisfaction as a function of romantic relationship stages. Trends in Psychology, 2023.
Static-99R: Strengths, limitations, predictive accuracy meta-analysis, and legal admissibility review. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2022.
Using a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure paradigm to study violent criminal behavior and legal decision-making under conditions of self-imposed guilt status online. SAGE Research Methods Cases, 2022.
Moving beyond sexual assault research’s reliance on self-report surveys using an online Choose-Your-Own-Adventure paradigm to study sexual assault behavior in college students. SAGE Research Methods Cases, 2022.
Dispelling a myth: Reevaluating the predictive validity of rape myth acceptance for likelihood of engaging in sexual violence. Sexual Abuse, 2021.
Studying sequential processes of criminal defendant decision-making using a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure research paradigm. Psychology Crime & Law, 2021.
Plea-bargaining law: The impact of innocence, trial penalty, and conviction probability on plea outcomes. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 2020.
Autonomic nervous system activity and callous-unemotional traits in physically maltreated youth. Child Abuse & Neglect, 2020.
Born this way? A review of neurobiological and environmental evidence for the etiology of psychopathy. Personality Neuroscience, 2019.
When a Plea Is No Bargain at All: Comparing Sentencing Outcomes for Massachusetts Defendants in Non-Sexual and Sexual Crimes. Albany Law Review, 2019.
Using model parameters describing affective dynamics to predict romantic relationship dissolution. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 2018.

Book Chapters

Forthcoming: State of the field commentary - plea bargaining. In “Confessions and Guilty Pleas of Youth: Developmental Science and Practical Implications,” Expected in 2024 from APA Publishing.
Trauma and stressor-related disorders: Systemic processes. In “DSM-5-TR® and Family Systems (Second Edition),” 2023.
Plea bargaining. In “Psychological Science and The Law,” 2019.
Pre-trial civil commitment of criminal defendants. In “Handbook on Pretrial Justice,” 2021.
Trauma and stressor-related disorders: Systemic processes. In “DSM-5® and Family Systems,” 2017.