Bias, cognitive heuristics, and forensic decision-making
The cumulative weight of 30 years of research originating in Tversky and Kaheman’s seminal 1974 description of the mental shortcuts humans use when confronting cognitive ambiguity complexity, and Kahneman’s recent masterpiece Thinking Fast, and Slow (2011, cf. Gilovich, Griffin, & Kahneman, 2002) has created a mature cognitive science of forensic decision-making. The findings are not […]
Forensic Psychology is Forensic Science.
There has been a growing awareness, some would say crisis, concerning the mediocre quality of expert forensic testimony submitted to the courts in the United States. This appears to be a function of weak methods, and a low threshold for judicial gatekeeping, despite clear mandates in Rule 702 and Daubert and progeny on the foundations […]
Professional Ethics,”partisan allegiance,” and expert witness liability
Daniel Murrie and his colleagues have produced a series of recent studies on “partisan allegiance” in forensic expert witness work (see citations below). They define partisan allegiance as the tendency for experts to bias their testimony in favor of the side that calls them. They demonstrate this through ingenious experiments with PCL-R ratings. The response […]
Thriving as a forensic psychologist
A nice article by William Foote PhD in APA’s Good Practice (Winter 2014) is worth a look for students who think they might be interested in forensic psychology. Contrasting clinical and forensic psychology, he writes, “But the field is not for everyone…Forensic psychology is also much more confrontational. You’re often in an adversarial position, with […]