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In law, a witness is someone who, either voluntarily or under compulsion, provides testimonial evidence, either oral or written, of what they know or claim to know.
Forensic psychology is the practice of psychology applied to the law. Forensic psychology is the application of scientific knowledge and methods to help answer legal questions arising in criminal, civil, contractual, or other judicial proceedings. Forensic psychology includes research on various psychology-law topics, such as jury selection, reducing systemic racism in criminal law, eyewitness testimony, evaluating competency to stand trial, or assessing military veterans for service-connected disability compensation. The American Psychological Association's Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychologists reference several psychology subdisciplines, such as social, clinical, experimental, counseling, and neuropsychology.
Elizabeth F. Loftus is an American psychologist who is best known in relation to the misinformation effect, false memory and criticism of recovered memory therapies.
Weapon focus is the concentration on a weapon by a witness of a crime and the subsequent inability to accurately remember other details of the crime. Weapon focus is a factor that heavily affects the reliability of eyewitness testimony. This effect involves a witness to a crime diverting his or her attention to the weapon the perpetrator is holding, thus causing memory impairments and leaving less attention for other details in the scene, such as the attacker’s face, clothing or vehicle.
Together, legal psychology and forensic psychology form the field more generally recognized as "psychology and law". Following earlier efforts by psychologists to address legal issues, psychology and law became a field of study in the 1960s as part of an effort to enhance justice, though that originating concern has lessened over time. The multidisciplinary American Psychological Association's Division 41, the American Psychology–Law Society, is active with the goal of promoting the contributions of psychology to the understanding of law and legal systems through research, as well as providing education to psychologists in legal issues and providing education to legal personnel on psychological issues. Further, its mandate is to inform the psychological and legal communities and the public at large of current research, educational, and service in the area of psychology and law. There are similar societies in Britain and Europe.
A police lineup or identity parade is a process by which a crime victim or witness's putative identification of a suspect is confirmed to a level that can count as evidence at trial.
The cross-race effect is the tendency to more easily recognize faces that belong to one's own racial group, or racial groups that one has been in contact with. In social psychology, the cross-race effect is described as the "ingroup advantage," whereas in other fields, the effect can be seen as a specific form of the "ingroup advantage" since it is only applied in interracial or inter-ethnic situations. The cross-race effect is thought to contribute to difficulties in cross-race identification, as well as implicit racial bias.
Eyewitness testimony is the account a bystander or victim gives in the courtroom, describing what that person observed that occurred during the specific incident under investigation. Ideally this recollection of events is detailed; however, this is not always the case. This recollection is used as evidence to show what happened from a witness' point of view. Memory recall has been considered a credible source in the past, but has recently come under attack as forensics can now support psychologists in their claim that memories and individual perceptions can be unreliable, manipulated, and biased. As a result of this, many countries, and states within the United States, are now attempting to make changes in how eyewitness testimony is presented in court. Eyewitness testimony is a specialized focus within cognitive psychology.
Forensic developmental psychology is a field of psychology that focuses on "children's actions and reactions in a forensic context" and "children's reports that they were victims or witnesses of a crime". Bruck and Poole (2002) first coined the term "forensic developmental psychology". Although forensic developmental psychology specifically focuses on a child's reliability, credibility, and competency in the courtroom setting, it also includes topics such as autobiographical memory, memory distortion, eyewitness identification, narrative construction, personality, and attachment.
Negative affectivity (NA), or negative affect, is a personality variable that involves the experience of negative emotions and poor self-concept. Negative affectivity subsumes a variety of negative emotions, including anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear, and nervousness. Low negative affectivity is characterized by frequent states of calmness and serenity, along with states of confidence, activeness, and great enthusiasm.
Memory conformity, also known as social contagion of memory, is the phenomenon where memories or information reported by others influences an individual and is incorporated into the individual's memory. Memory conformity is a memory error due to both social influences and cognitive mechanisms. Social contamination of false memory can be exemplified in prominent situations involving social interactions, such as eyewitness testimony. Research on memory conformity has revealed that such suggestibility and errors with source monitoring has far reaching consequences, with important legal and social implications. It is one of many social influences on memory, and is sometimes known as the Mandela effect.
A suggestive question is one that implies that a certain answer should be given in response, or falsely presents a presupposition in the question as accepted fact. Such a question distorts the memory thereby tricking the person into answering in a specific way that might or might not be true or consistent with their actual feelings, and can be deliberate or unintentional. For example, the phrasing "Don't you think this was wrong?" is more suggestive than "Do you think this was wrong?" despite the difference of only one word. The former may subtly pressure the respondent into responding "yes", whereas the latter is far more direct. Repeated questions can make people think their first answer is wrong and lead them to change their answer, or it can cause people to continuously answer until the interrogator gets the exact response that they desire. The diction used by the interviewer can also be an influencing factor to the response given by the interrogated individual.
Eyewitness memory is a person's episodic memory for a crime or other witnessed dramatic event. Eyewitness testimony is often relied upon in the judicial system. It can also refer to an individual's memory for a face, where they are required to remember the face of their perpetrator, for example. However, the accuracy of eyewitness memories is sometimes questioned because there are many factors that can act during encoding and retrieval of the witnessed event which may adversely affect the creation and maintenance of the memory for the event. Experts have found evidence to suggest that eyewitness memory is fallible.
The misinformation effect occurs when a person's recall of episodic memories becomes less accurate because of post-event information. The misinformation effect has been studied since the mid-1970s. Elizabeth Loftus is one of the most influential researchers in the field. One theory is that original information and the misleading information that was presented after the fact become blended together. Another theory is that the misleading information overwrites the original information. Scientists suggest that because the misleading information is the most recent, it is more easily retrieved.
Reconstructive memory is a theory of memory recall, in which the act of remembering is influenced by various other cognitive processes including perception, imagination, motivation, semantic memory and beliefs, amongst others. People view their memories as being a coherent and truthful account of episodic memory and believe that their perspective is free from an error during recall. However, the reconstructive process of memory recall is subject to distortion by other intervening cognitive functions such as individual perceptions, social influences, and world knowledge, all of which can lead to errors during reconstruction.
An eyewitness testimony is a statement given under oath by a person present at an event who can describe what happened. During circumstances in which a child is a witness to the event, the child can be used to deliver a testimony on the stand. The credibility of a child, however, is often questioned due to their underdeveloped memory capacity and overall brain physiology. Researchers found that eyewitness memory requires high-order memory capacity even for well-developed adult brain. Because a child's brain is not yet fully developed, each child witness must be assessed by the proper authorities to determine their reliability as a witness and whether they are mature enough to accurately recall the event, provide important details and withstand leading questions.
John Donald Read is a Canadian psychologist and is currently employed as professor of psychology and chair of the psychology department at Simon Fraser University in Canada. He works primarily in the field of Law and Forensics and has conducted research in the fields of human memory, eyewitness memory and the legal system.
Abusive supervision is most commonly studied in the context of the workplace, although it can arise in other areas such as in the household and at school. "Abusive supervision has been investigated as an antecedent to negative subordinate workplace outcome." "Workplace violence has combination of situational and personal factors". The study that was conducted looked at the link between abusive supervision and different workplace events.
Judith L. Daylen(previously Cutshall) is a board-certified psychologist. In 1982, she received her B.A. in psychology and philosophy from the University of North Carolina. In 1985, Dr. Daylen received her M.A. in cognitive psychology, and in 1994 she received her PH.D. in clinical psychology both from the University of British Columbia. Dr. Daylen currently works as a clinical and consulting psychologist- she assesses the harm suffered to sexual assault victims and provides expert testimony in court. Recently, Dr. Daylen has focused on providing psychological assessments of victims of physical and sexual assault; however, she has past experience in providing both individual and group treatment to assault victims. To better understand the experience of assault victims and to assist them during times of crisis, Dr. Daylen also volunteered at a rape crisis center. She has even contributed to a book: "Trauma, Trials, and Transformation, Guiding sexual assault victims through the legal system and beyond". In addition to her work with sexual assault victims, Dr. Daylen has contributed to assessing the reliability of eyewitness testimony. Along with John C. Yuille in 1986, Dr. Daylen published a psychological experiment which concluded that eyewitness testimony is often reliable and has merit. Dr. Daylen is also an ordained lay practitioner of Zen Buddhism.
Russell Cropanzano is an American management scholar. As of 2022, he is a professor of organizational behavior at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder.
References
- ↑ Yuille, J.C., & Tollestrup, P. (1990). "Some effects of alcohol on eyewitness memory". Journal of Applied Psychology. 75 (3): 268–273. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.75.3.268. PMID 2354983.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - 1 2 Yuille, J. C., Davies, G., Gibling, F., Marxsen, D., & Porter, S. (1994). "Eyewitness memory of police trainees for realistic role plays". Journal of Applied Psychology. 79 (6): 931–936. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.79.6.931.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ↑ Marxsen D., Yuille, J.C. & Nisbett, M. (1995). "The complexities of eliciting and assessing children's statements". Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. 1 (2): 450–460. doi:10.1037/1076-8971.1.2.450.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ↑ "C.V." (PDF). Retrieved May 14, 2012.
- ↑ "JOHN YUILLE" . Retrieved May 14, 2012.
- ↑ Yuille, J.C. (1993). "We must study forensic eyewitnesses to know about them". American Psychologist. 48 (5): 572–573. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.48.5.572.
- ↑ Yuille, J. C., Ternes, M., & Cooper, B. S. (2010). "Expert testimony on laboratory witnesses". Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice. 10 (3): 238–251. doi:10.1080/15228930903550590. S2CID 145164576.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ↑ Yuille, J.C. (1988). "The systematic assessment of children's testimony". Canadian Psychology. 29 (3): 247–262. doi:10.1037/h0079769.
