Forensic Psychology

Question 1

Criminal Forensic Psychology

Answer 1

Forensic psychology is the practice of psychology applied to the law. The practice of forensic psychology involves investigations, research studies, assessments, consultation, the design and implementation of treatment programs and expert witness courtroom testimony.

Question 2

Expert Witness

Answer 2

They are used for
- Assessing a defendant’s fitness to stand trial
- Assessing an offender’s risk of future violence
- Eyewitness memory
- Criminal responsibility

Question 3

Crime

Answer 3

Crime is a social construct, which means what is defined as criminal behaviour can be impacted by societal, cultural, historical and political factors, rather than being ‘wrong’. Forensic Psychology is ethnocentric as it is only relevant to the culture where the research was carried out.

Question 4

Biological Explanations

Answer 4

• Genetic Influences (e.g. MAOA “warrior gene”).
• Neurobiological Factors: Related to aggression and impulse control.
• Physiological Influences: Hormones (like testosterone) affect behaviour.

Question 5

Psychological Explanations

Answer 5

• Lack of Self-Control: Inclination towards immediate gratification leads to impulsive actions without considering consequences.
• Impulsivity: Quick reactions to situations without thought for the long-term effects.
• Egocentrism: Difficulty in taking the perspective of others, leading to self-centred behaviour.

Question 6

Sociocultrual Explanations

Answer 6

• Life exposure, situational exposure, incident exposure
• Proximity to criminal behaviour
• Availability of weapons
• Care and supervision
• Careers
• Lifestyle choices, for example, drug and alcohol use

Question 7

Victimology

Answer 7

Victimology is the study of victimization, including the psychological effects on victims, the relationship between victims and offenders, the interactions between victims and the criminal justice system—that is, the police and courts, and corrections officials—and the connections between victims and other social groups and institutions, such as the media, businesses, and social movements. Victim evidence must be collected with the scientific method.

Question 8

Avoiding Logical Fallacy

Answer 8

The association fallacy is a formal logical fallacy where properties of one thing must also be properties of another thing if both things belong to the same group. So in FP, it is to believe that everything found in the crime scene or in relation to the crime must be associated to it.

Question 9

Criminal Profile

Answer 9

Criminal profiling refers to the process in which the nature of a crime is used to make suppositions about the personality and other characteristics of the likely offender.

• Physiological characteristics
• Psychological characteristics

Question 10

BEA

Answer 10

• Crime Scene Analysis: Forensic evidence.
• Victimology: Personal and other characteristics of the victim to show how, where, when and why the victim was chosen.
• Crime Scene: The amount of crime scenes, was the scene particularly meaningful to the offender?
• Criminal Profile: Physical and psychological characteristics of the likely offender.
• The Apprehension: Interview, investigation, warrant, arrest, trial.

Criminal profiling suffers greatly from an absence of accuracy and applied understanding.

Question 11

Signature Aspect

Answer 11

The emotional or psychological themes or needs that an offender desires when they commit offense behaviours.

Question 12

Signature Behaviour

Answer 12

Signature behaviors are those acts committed by an offender that are not necessary to complete the offence. Their combination can be used to suggest an offender’s psychological or emotional needs (signature aspect).

Question 13

Disorganised Crime Scene

Answer 13

• Looks chaotic
• Victim killed quickly
• Location is usually part of the victim’s own routine (ie work or home) as lack social skills prevent them from going other places
• Victim may be depersonalised (blindfolded, covered up or disfigured)
• Body & weapon used often left at the scene
• Footprints, fingerprints left behind

Question 14

Organised Crime Scene

Answer 14

• Carefully selected location
• Sometimes the location chosen first, then first person to arrive is the victim, but more often the victim has been premeditatively selected.
• Location is isolated and they cannot be easily observed.
• The organised offender will have preferences for their victims (ie age, gender, appearance)
• Usually, the offender has social abilities.

Question 15

Case Study / Research

Answer 15

• Case studies are investigations of a single person, event or community.
• If researchers want to know more, then they conduct research.

Question 16

Polygraphs (Lie Detectors)

Answer 16

Measures and records several physiological indicators such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and persperation while a person is asked and answers a series of questions.

• Lying for answers will produce physiological responses (fight or flight) that can be sundered from those associated with truthful answers.

Question 17

Are Polygraphs Valid?

Answer 17

The accuracy of the polygraph is 87%. They can be unreliable as the participants who think the test works may confess or will activate responses when questioned.

Question 18

Problems with Encoding

Answer 18

• Violent distractions
• Weapon Focus

Question 19

Violence Distractions

Answer 19

People have more reliable memory for non-violent events compared to violent events. The witnessing of violent events have downstream implications for memory, and may result in individuals missing important in a complex visual field. .

Question 20

Yerkes-Dodson Law

Answer 20

The Yerkes-Dodson effect states that when anxiety is at low and high levels, eyewitness testimony is less accurate than if anxiety is at a medium level. Recall improves as anxiety increases up to a point and then declines.

Question 21

Weapon Focus

Answer 21

Weapon focus is the concentration on a weapon by a witness of a crime and loss of ability to accurately remember other details of the crime.
Weapon focus is a factor that impacts the reliability of eyewitness testimony.

Question 22

Trace Dependent Forgetting

Answer 22

Based upon memory traces that lose activation, or decay, with time, unless reactivated by being recalled. The longer the time between witnessing an event and being asked to retrieve information, the more information is lost from the STM.

Question 23

Motivated forgetting

Answer 23

Behaviour in which people may forget memories, either consciously or unconsciously. It is an example of a defence mechanism since these are unconscious or conscious coping techniques used to reduce anxiety. Painful and disturbing memories are made unconscious and very difficult to retrieve, but still remain in storage.

Question 24

Cue-dependent forgetting

Answer 24

Cue-dependent forgetting, or retrieval failure, is the failure to recall information without memory cues.

Question 25

Eyewitness Techniques

Answer 25

Cognitive Interview
Forensic Hypnosis
Line Up
Mug Shots
Facial Composite

Question 26

Cognitive Interview

Answer 26

The cognitive interview (CI) is a questioning technique used by the police to enhance the retrieval of information about a crime scene from the eyewitness’s and victim’s memory.

It uses cue-dependent forgetting techniques and has four stages to stimulate as many cues as possible in order to maximize different retrieval routes.

Stage 1: Reinstate the context

Stage 2: Recall events in reverse order

Stage 3: Report everything they can remember

Stage 4: Describe events from someone else’s point of view

Question 27

False Memory

Answer 27

Where someone recalls something that did not actually happen or recalls it differently from the way it actually happened.

• Suggestibility, activation of associated information, the incorporation of misinformation, and source misattribution have been suggested to be several reasons for why we have false memories
• Leading questions
• Perception
• Emotion

Question 28

Loftus & Palmer Recap

Answer 28

Conducted two experiments in which the participants viewed videos of automobile accidents and answered follow-up questions.
One question inquiring how fast the automobiles were moving when they ‘smashed’ into each other, resulted in higher estimates of speed than the queries that had verbs such as ‘bumped,’ ‘contacted,’ ‘collided’ or ‘hit,’ instead of ‘smashed.’
A week later, the subjects who had received the question containing ‘smashed’ were more likely to indicate that they had also seen broken glass in the scene, although the video did not show any broken glass.
These results seemed to imply that the questions asked following an event could add falsity to one’s memory of that event.

• Ecological Validity: Simulated environments (film clips of car accidents) rather than real-life situations.
• Sample Characteristics: The participants were mostly students, which limits the generalizability of the findings.

Question 29

Tunnel Vision

Answer 29

Tunnel vision is the tendency of actors in the criminal justice system to use short-cuts to control evidence selectively to build a case for a suspect’s conviction or how perceive and interpret situations.
Confirmation bias and Hindsight bias.

Question 30

Ethnic Bias

Answer 30

Engaging in discriminatory behaviour, having negative attitudes toward, or otherwise having reactions toward people based on their ethnicity.

Question 31

Emotions

Answer 31

Subjective Feelings
Expressive Behaviour (eyes, increased blinking, contraction of pupils)
Physiological Responses