History of Applied/Forensic Psychology Flashcards
Criminology
The study of crime
Forensic Psychology
The study of psychology as applied to the law.
Devoted to psychological aspects of legal processes in courts. The term is also often used to refer to investigative and criminological psychology.
- Understanding psychological problems associated with criminal behaviour treatment of and interventions with offenders.
- Applying psychological theory to criminal investigation.
- Legal decision making
Forensic Psychology definition (Monahan and Loftus, 1982)
All psychology is relevant to substantive law since any aspect of human behaviour may be the subject of legal regulation.
Forensic Psychology definition (Goldstein, 2003)
Involves the application of psychological research methods theory and practice and traditional and specialised methodology to provide information relevant to a legal question.
Forensic Psychology definition (Howitt, 2018)
Forensic Psychology is psychology applied to the work of courts of law
Forensic Practice definition (Blackburn, 1993)
The provision of psychological information for the purpose of facilitating a legal decision
Expert Witness
Ability to testify at court hearings
Clinical assessments
Mental state of person involved in legal proceedings: at time of offence, at court appearance, at sentencing. Diminished responsibility = reflected in sentence
Experimental
Studies to substantiate testimony
Actuarial
Probability or likelihood
Advisory
Examine evidence, for example analysis of interview
Jimmy Saville Case Study
450 victims 214 substantive crimes recorded 34 rapes 5 decades of offending Age range 8 to 74 73% children or young people 82% female
Wilhelm Wundt
Considered the be ‘the’ founding father of psychology
Medically trained physiologist
Studied conscious experience, sensation, and perception (introspection, structuralism)
Laboratory-based research (Leipzig, 1879)
1873 - published the first psychology text, Principles of Physiological Psychology
Trained hundreds of researchers including Cattell and Munsterberg
When did ‘applied psychology’ first emerge?
Hugo Munsterberg is generally credited for being the founder of applied psychology
Benjamin (2007) says that applied psychology always existed
Munsterberg published a manifesto on psychology’s role in the justice system called On The Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and Crime.
Munsterberg false memory experiments
Münsterberg presented psychology students with a piece of white cardboard with 50 black squares on it. When asked how many squares there were, the answers ranged from 25 to 200.
Buckhout (1974)
Staged an assault on a university campus and then asked bystanders to pick the guilty through a line-up.
60% did not correctly identify the assailant, 2/3 incorrectly chose an innocent bystander who was at the crime scene
Conclusions of Munsterberg
Every witness is subjective, and he called for empiricism over common sense especially in courts.
Root of individual differences
Phrenology (feeling for head bumps and judging personality) popular in 18th and 19th century
Founded by Franz Gall (1758-1828)
Cattell (1860-1944)
Contributed to improving psychology as a science (Benjamin, 2007)
Background in cognitive psychology. Proposed that ‘simple mental processes’ underline intelligence
Work was the original seed of forensic psychology, although eventually replaced by Binet’s IQ testing battery and disproven by Clark Wissler
How is forensic psychology applied psychology?
Forensic psychology is applied to the courtroom and legal processes.
William Stern (1871-1938)
Coined the term IQ ‘the degree of reactive, general intelligence, that means the capacity to handle definite objectivity determined tasks for thinking’
Psychopathology
Early work on abnormality was referred to as hysteria
Considered a ‘female problem’ relating to the restless movements of the womb
Diagnosis of hysteria originated from the work of Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893)
Was chief physician at first psychiatric hospital opened in 1879 that held only women
Freud (1856-1939)
Conducted studies on hysteria in 1895.
Proposed the concept of the unconscious and its role in psychopathology
The unconscious is made up of cognitive, affective and motivational processes which impact on our behaviour
Ego psychology
Abnormality is determined by unconscious conflicts between personal impulses and social rules
Defence mechanisms
Employed by the who to relieve unpleasant emotional problems which occur when the unconscious desires of the id approach consciousness
Schug and Fradella (2015)
Variants of psychoanalytic theory were applied to understand phobias, OCD and personality pathologies.
Maladaptive unconscious processes lead to criminal behaviour
Oedipus complex - guilt - criminal behaviour engaged in to relieve the feelings of guilt
Other unconscious motivational processes include overcompensation for sense of inferiority and a need to be caught and protected
The death instinct (Schug and Fradella, 2015)
An unconscious aggressive drive and thus could underpin aggressive behaviour
Narcissistic injury (Schug and Fradella, 2015)
A threat to one’s sense of self where the person responds with rage and aggression
John Bowlby (1907-1990)
Drew on psychoanalytic principles and theorised that early childhood experience is key
