PSYC 2400: Overview of Forensic Psychology

Books and Videos Mentioned in Class:

• Video: Watch one of the Stanford Prison Study on Youtube
• Book: On the Witness Stand, by Hugo Munsterberg, the father of forensic psychology (his book was inflammatory and rejected by legal scholars but it pushed forensics into the legal arena)
• Book: The Handbook of Forensic Psychology

Contents

1. 1. Defining Forensic Psychology
2. 2. Psychology vs. Law
   1. 2.1 More Differences
   2. 2.2 Expert Witnesses and Testimony
3. 3. History of Forensic Psychology
   1. 3.1 Important Research Studies and Names
   2. 3.2 Psychological Theories
   3. 3.3 Forensics as a Distinct Discipline
4. 4. Ethical Issues

1. Defining Forensic Psychology

Though the definition of "Forensic Psychology" is unclear, these three definitions outline the broad and narrow view of forensic psychology:

1. Narrow Definition: the professional practice by psychologists within the areas of clinical psychology, counselling psychology, neuro-psychology and school psychology, when they are engaged regularly as experts and represent themselves as such, in a an activity primarily intended to provide professional expertise to the judicial system. ABFP-AP-LS (1995)
   
   In essence, this describes the people who represent themselves as experts (based on their research and practical experience) in the judicial system (often as expert witnesses). This definition is not widely accepted by many forensics psychologists because it fails to encompass actual researchers, though it is used in the APA as the "official" definition.
2. Broad Definition: Issues arising out of the relationship between human behaviour and the law, legal system and legal process.Weiner (1997)
   
   This captures everyone, from researchers to practical psychologists; and by "issues", we are normally referring to research issues (or topics).
3. Narrow and Broad Definition ^{(the favourite!)}: A research endeavour and a professional practice. Bartol and Bartol (1987)
   
   Encompasses both practical and academic professions so it's the preferred definition. Think of it as "Testimony (practical) is based on theory (research)."

2. Psychology vs. Law

In order of class importance (in what we'll be talking about), the ways in which psychology and law interact:

1. Psychology and the law: where we study testable assumptions that the law makes (how it operates). For example, we can examine the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies, and whether or not interrogation techniques cause people to falsely confess.
2. Psychology in the law: the actual application of psychology in law (as it operates). For example, by using research to support your expert testimony, you are applying psychology to law. Another example is how police officers use psychology (tests, etc - we'll talk about this next week) to pick the best police officers.
3. Psychology of the law: studies the law itself – more historically based; it focuses on why the law is the way it is – what made people decide that laws should be the way they are. The issue with this topic is that:
   • It's not well-researched so the background research is tough to find; and
   • To have an intelligent and relevant discussion on psychology and law, you'd need to be well versed in both areas; only SFU offers this type of training so it's a bit difficult to find a pool of people to do research in this area.

Haney (1980)

2.1 More Differences

The following table outlines some more of these differences.

Table 1. Differences between Psychology and Law

Topic	Psychology	Law	Comments
Knowledge	Research	Stare decisis	Where Psychology is the accumulation of knowledge over time to solidify our results and knowledge, Law uses cases to build onto each other in order to determine the narrow band of what's acceptable and what isn't.
Methodology	Nomothetic	Idiographic	Psychology uses large sample sizes to establish general rules and principles whereas Law attempts to understand individual on a case-by-case basis.
Epistemology	Experiments	Adversarial	Where Psychology uses research and results to find "the truth", Law defines "the truth" as whatever the court rules.
Criteria	Strict	Lenient	Psychology must be absolutely sure (think: 95%!) before results are accepted whereas Law gets away with more subjective measures of what's true (think: "beyond a reasonable doubt").
Nature	Descriptive	Prescriptive	Though Psyschology attempts to describe how you behave, the Law tells you how you should behave.
Principles	Multiple	Single	Psychology attempts to look for multiple reasons for why a result is the way it is (which is why we control our experiments) whereas the Law normally stops at one reasonable explanation for why something is the way it is. (Inquisitive vs. Acceptance)
Latitude	Limited	Unlimited	Psychologists are limited in what they can do and say and how they do it and say it (cough: Ethics Board) but lawyers have more options.

2.2 Expert Witnesses and Testimony

Though not covered in class, the role of expert witnesses is important to understand:

Expert Witness:

A witness that provides the court with information (often, an opinion based on research) that assists the court in understanding an issue related to the case.

In the United States, in order for a court to accept expert testimony, it must pass the:

General Acceptance Test:

The testimony is only accepted in court if the basis of the testimony is generally accepted within the relevant scientific community. Unfortunately, it’s tough to define “how” it is generally accepted (what criteria do we use?) and to what “relevant scientific community” it belongs.

In order to remedy this problem, the US Supreme Court decided that scientific evidence and expert testimoy must meet the Daubert Criteria:

• The research must be peer reviewed.
• The research is testable.
• The research has a recognized rate of error.
• The research adheres to professional standards.

In Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada decided that expert testimony must meet the Mohan Criteria:

• The evidence must be relevant, in that it makes a fact at issue more or less likely.
• The testimony must be about something that goes beyond the common knowledge of the court.
• The testimony must not relate to whether a witness is telling the truth.
• The testimony must be provided by a qualified expert, which is typically determined through treaining, experience and research.

3. History of Forensic Psychology

This section is summarized from The Handbook of Forensic Psychology.

3.1 Important Research Studies and Names

And in the beginning…

The Beginning

1. Cattell (1893) – Apples and Horses: though not a forensic psychologist, Catell was a pioneer in the field. He studied what we now would call witness testimonies.
   • Purpose: He asked his students to recall the mundane events of their day and recorded the accuracy and confidence of their recollection.
   • Results: He found that their answers were often inaccurate and that there was no correlation between the Confidence of their answers and the Accuracy of their answers.
   • Today: This study lacks external validity: it's not very applicable to real-life situations of recollection in actual eyewitness testimonies because it fails to address the emotional impact.
2. Stern and Liszt (1910) – Classroom Encounter:
   • Purpose: The professor arranged to have two students have a heated disagreement in the middle of the class where one of them eventually pulls out a revolver and then they are both kicked out of class. The purpose was to see how accurately the students could remember the details of the event.
   • Results: High emotions reduced the accuracy of recollection. Let's pretend you're on a bus and you're travelling down the road of your memories: as you approach a bus shelter (the disagreement), you can see the details of the shelter fairly clearly - there is little distraction, though you can't quite make out all the details. The closer you get, the faster the bus shelter seems to be moving towards you. As you pass the bus shelter, it's more of a blur than an actual building. Just like when we pass objects moving at a fast speed, we can't make out the details of stressful events the more stressful they become. We lose ourselves in the moment.
3. Von Schrenck-Notzing (1896) – Press Coverage:
   • Purpose: There was a lot of pre-trial press coverage on a particular German murder case; VSN studied the effects of this coverage in order to see if it would affect memory recall in the jurors and witnesses.
   • Results: (Retroactive Memory Falsification was coined) he discovered that people often had false memories – they confuse their own memories with what's shown on TV or reported in the press.

3.2 Psychological Theories

The following three Freudian theories are important for the exam.

1. Maternal Deprivation (Psychodynamic Theory): though this theory has fallen out of favour, it’s still good to know. This is where we attribute a person's adult delinquency to having been separated from their maternal caregiver at an early age. There was believed to have been a point at which prosocial behaviour could only be learned during a Critical Window in early development.
   Today, we do know that early parental roles are important in psychological development in children, but the parental roles can be biological or adoptive, single or multiple, straight or other.
2. Operant Conditioning (Learning Theory) (and other forms of conditioning): though not specific to crime, criminal (or delinquent) behaviours can be learned. It’s often learned through the primary influences in your life: family, friends and media.
3. Personality Differences (Personality Theory): criminal personalities differ from non-criminals in that they tend to exhibit more neurotic and extroverted traits. They often fail to learn ‘proper’ behaviour that non-criminals would normally learn from operant conditioning (ex. mom slaps you on the wrist when you steal a cookie and you don’t do it again; a criminal wouldn’t learn their lesson.)
   Highly extroverted individuals (as opposed to introverted individuals) condition less efficiently because they need more stimulation (ie. they don't react as strong to bad consequences); highly neurotic individuals (as opposed to stable individuals) condition less efficiently because they have more negative reactions to anxiety, and are therefore more difficult to socialize. High-E and High-N people will have strong antisocial inclinations whereas High-I and High-S people will have strong prosocial inclinations.

3.3 Forensics as a Distinct Discipline

Forensics only recently became recognized as a distinct discipline – meaning that it was only recently that it was recognized by the APA. This means that we’ve experienced a surge in: books, journals, associations and degree programs. Those studying forensics also have to abide by the code of ethics (that’s actually set out by an American association).

4. Ethical Issues

Most ethical issues arise in a research environment but they can happen in a clinical setting as well. Here are common issues that are faced:

• Competence: you must operate within your own domain – this is determined by your education, research and experience.
• Conflicts of Interest: if you run into a COI, you must alert the appropriate players and more often than not, withdraw yourself from the situation.
• Informed Consent: you must obtain informed consent from your participants before conducting any experiments. There are 3 criteria that must be followed when obtaining consent. You must obtain it:
  1. Intelligently: the person must be in the right state of mind to give informed consent (ex. alcohol or severe mental deficits prevent the person from giving sound consent);
  2. Knowingly: they must understand what the study is and what’s expected of them;
  3. Voluntarily: the person has to give their consent willingly – they can’t be coerced into taking part of the study.
• Client Confidentiality: you must not break confidentiality unless…
• Duty to Disclose: (read up on the Tarasoff v. Regents of University of California case) psychologists, when disclosed confidential information from someone who may pose a threat to society, must disclose the information appropriately – the participants must be informed that they can only participate if they are okay with that risk.
• Suspected Child Abuse: any suspected child abuse must be reported instantly.