Term
| What is Psychology and Law? |
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Definition
• The application of scientific and professional aspects of psychology to questions and issues relating to law and the legal system
• Psycho-legal issues: reliability of eyewitness memory, reliability of confession evidence, etc. |
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Term
| Careers in Psychology and Law |
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Definition
• Clinical/forensic psychologists (assessment and treatment recommendations; trial counseling)
• Academics, researchers, and expert witnesses (developmental, cognitive, and social psychologists)
• Community psychologists (evaluating programs such as juvenile delinquency prevention and treatment)
• Criminal profilers |
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Term
| Are interrogation tactics psychologically coercive? Do they elicit confessions from innocent individuals? |
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Definition
• Yes, studies show that investigators are trained to look for non-diagnostic cutes to deception, have a framework that assumes guilt, and these biases affect how interviews and interrogations are approached.
• Some coercive tactics are actual or threat of violence, false evidence, promise of leniency, and confrontation
• Yes, they elicit confessions. Studies show that modern popular techniques together with other contextual factors may lead to false confessions.
• Some individuals are more susceptible to coercive techniques, including young age, mental capacity (IQ, retardation, illness), and cultural background (compliance, collectivism)
• Jurors fail to sufficiently weigh situational factors and discount evidence of coercion |
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Term
| Under what conditions is an eyewitness more likely to be mistaken? |
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Definition
• Environmental estimator factors: Lighting, event duration, event frequency, distance, detail salience, violence of the event
• Witness estimator factors: Stress, expectation, attention, alcohol, age, infirmities, race
• System factors: Lineups, post-event information (question wording; nonverbal influences) |
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Term
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Definition
• Non-verbal behaviors: increase in speech errors, higher pitch of voice, fewer gestures, less movement in hand and fingers
• Analysis of verbal indicators: more negative statements, less plausible answers, less direct answers, shorter response length, fewer self references
• Physiological: Polygraph (breathing rate, heart rate, sweat) [Control Questions Technique; Guilty-Knowledge Technique], Computer Voice Stress Analyzer (measures voice tremors due to stress), brain fingerprinting (EEG; P300 wave) |
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Term
| Do the scientific research support popular beliefs about lie detection? |
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Definition
| There are many mismatches from popular belief and the research results about cues to deception (such as gestures and movement of hands/fingers) |
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Term
| How accurate are the methods to detecting liars? |
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Definition
• Behavioral cues: not reliable
• Verbal cues/Statement Analysis: can be useful under the right conditions
• Physiological: No direct correlation between lying and physiological reactions |
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Term
| Is there reliable empirical research on profiling? |
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Definition
• Research has shown that experts do better at profiling offenders only in the case of sex offense, but not homocide
• Stage 1: Review info from crime scene (ask questions, classify crime as mass murder or serial murder)
• Stage 2: Reconstruct offender's behavior (organized/disorganized)
• Stage 3: Generate a profile (visionary, mission-oriented, hedonistic, power/control oriented)
• Stage 4: Investigate using a profile (write report, give general description, give to police) |
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Term
| What are rape trauma and battered women syndromes? |
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Definition
• RTS: Women who suffer a cluster of symptoms/traits due to having been raped. Involves two phases - acute crisis phase; long-term reaction phase.
• BWS: Women who suffer a cluster of symptoms/traits due to long-term abuse |
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Term
| Should expert testimony be allowed in cases involving these BWS and RTS? Is there enough empirical research? |
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Definition
• BWS: Not a legal defense. Role of expert is to explain why she didn't leave, and why she attacked when he was vulnerable. Problems - objectivity of expert, no scientific validity, and it doesn't have much of an effect on jurors.
• RTS: Role of expert is to use RTS to help jurors decide whether sex was consensual or not and to dispel rape myths. Problems - may be used against victim, original clinical studies were not scientific, and some say few confirm symptoms are not scientific "proof" to testify in court. |
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Term
| Can memories be repressed and recovered? Can false memories for childhood events be planted? Under what conditions? |
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Definition
• Mental health professionals believe in repression/recovery
• Memory researchers do not believe in repression/recovery
• False memories can be planted
• Conditions: Event must be plausible, imagination improves likelihood, photographs increase likelihood |
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Term
| Does the scientific research support the Legal System’s view of children? |
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Definition
• Some are proven true, some proven false
• "Not as good as adults at observing and reporting events" (Context matters)
• Prone to fantasy about sexual matters (anatomical detailed dolls show this is true)
• Highly suggestible (evidence shows this is true, however improves with age)
• Unable to distinguish fact from fantasy (false)
• Prone to confabulation (depends on context/atmosphere)
• Children are not liars (false, they can lie by age 3) |
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Term
| Can we trust children’s testimony? What condition lead to reliable or unreliable statements? |
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Definition
• Sometimes children's remembering ability can be as good as adult, but generally they get better with age.
• Suggestive questions, reinforcement, anatomical detailed dolls, and social influence can lead to unreliable statements.
• Children report accurately when the event is familiar, the tasks are simplified, there is a supportive interviewer, they are comfortable, and their parents believe them |
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Term
| Does the scientific research support stereotypes of jurors? |
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Definition
| When the case is ambiguous, some juror characteristic variables may play a role (particularly locus of control and authoritarian personality traits). |
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Term
| What does the research into key processes of capital cases tell us? |
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Definition
• Death qualified: There are attitudinal, dispositional, and demographic differences that make it more likely to find defendant guilty and apply death penalty
• Phase II: Jurors often misunderstand instructions. Also, there are racial disperities |
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Term
| Trial Consultants – what do they do? Does it work? It is ethical? |
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Definition
• Trial consultants are advisors hired to provide expertise in the service of litigants. They use psychological knowledge to influence trial processes such that they produce favorable outcomes for the client.
• Not enough research to back this up. However famous cases have been used to measure success.
• Ethical: It could be argued that when consultants help a weak attorney do a better job at representing a client, they may be improving the adversarial system and serving interests of the justice. However most clients work for wealthy business interests. |
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