Forensic psychology historic people

Daniel McNaughton

outlined the standard for defining insanity in the context of criminal cases (McNaughton rule)

James Cattell

one of the first to study eyewitness testimony, looked at relationship between confidence and accuracy

Alfred Binet

studied suggestibility in children; demonstrated that children are susceptible to leading questions, asking open-ended questions had most accurate responses

Binet study

button glued to posted board; some kids asked to write what they saw, others asked probing, slightly misleading, or highly leading questions

Louis William Stern

the eyewitness "reality" experiment; students fighting, one pulls a gun; concluded that high arousal can have an impact on accuracy

Albert von Schrenck-Notzing

one of the first psychologists to serve as an expert witness in court

retroactive memory falsification

confusion about what is witnessed vs what is heard or seen later (eg. in the media) Albert von Schrenck-Notzing

Julian Varendonck

conducted research on inaccurate recall; demonstrated inaccurate recall in children by asking them to describe a nonexistent person; against the use of children as witnesses in court

Hugo Munsterberg

the father of forensic psychology, brought psychology and law together

William Marston

Found correlation between systolic blood pressure and lying, became the basis of the modern day polygraph/lie detection; first professor of legal psychology; research on lie detection, and jury system.

State v. Driver

first use of expert testimony in us, partial victory for forensic psych, psychologist allowed to serve as expert witness but was not believed

Brown v. Board of education

first time psychological research was acknowledged in the courtroom, racial schools black child was closer to white school

Jenkins v. US

clinical psychologist argued that defendant was not guilty due to insanity, but judge instructed jury to ignore the psychologists as they "weren’t qualified”