area 2 forensic psychology Flashcards
what are patent prints?
visible to the naked eye
what are latent prints?
not visible so require alternative light sources
what is top down processing?
what enters our eye is translated first by our cognition and prior experience. more subjective as contextual information is used
what is bottom down processing?
purely data driven what you see is what you get
what is significant about the brandon mayfield case?
he was wrongly identified to one of the prints left at the scene of the madrid train bombing, recently converted to Muslim
what did kassin find?
mayfield case plus others show forensic evidence isn’t infallible
what did hampikian find?
found several types of testimony had convicted innocent people
38% contained incorrect blood analysis#
2% incorrect fingerprints
what are motivating factors in fingerprint analysis?
emotional motivation- emotional response leads to strong desire to find offender
cognitive closure- need to have a definitive conclusion
what did charlton study?
whether emotions would influence fingerprint analysis, used semi structured interviews of 13 experienced experts.
asked how they felt about succeding in mathcing the prints
what did charlton find?
reward of job satisfaction and satisfaction with catching criminals among 5 themes associated with emotion and fingerprint analysis. influenced by psychological factors which can lead to errors
what did dror study?
if some types of crime are more motivating than others because of emotional context.
used 27 volunteered students, had to match fingerprints that were either ambiguous or unambiguous after looking at photo and story for either a high or low emotional context crime.
what did dror find?
in the non ambiguous pairs the participants were unaffected by the emotional context, however in the ambiguous pairs participants were influenced
what did kruglanski find?
found that when the need for cognitive closure is high,quicker judgement are made however when the need is low more possibilities are taken into account. unfounded confidence paradox- faulty yet confident fingerprint analysis
what did tversky and kahnmen find?
explain decision making as not nearly as rational as we would like it to be and we make unintentional errors
what is contextual bias?
when irrelevant information about an event or the way information is presented influences reasoning
