LAW-402 midterm 1

psychology and law

A: The application of psychological knowledge/research methods to advise, evaluate, and reform the legal system.

Law

Q: Clash of cultures — differing GOALS?

= approximate justice (prescriptive — tells us how we ought to behave; dichotomous outcomes like guilty/not guilty; individual-focused).

Psychology

Q: Clash of cultures — differing GOALS?

= approximate truth (descriptive — tells us how people actually behave; probabilistic, revisable findings; group-focused).

Law

Q: Clash of cultures — differing METHODS?

= rulings based on authority/precedent (stare decisis = "let the decision stand"), hierarchical (higher courts have more authority).

Psychology

Q: Clash of cultures — differing METHODS?

= data based on empiricism, egalitarian (any researcher can study anything), theories revised as new data comes in.

Law

Q: Clash of cultures — differing STYLE OF INQUIRY?

= advocacy (adversarial system, lawyers argue for their client, truth assumed to emerge from competing evidence).

Psychology

Q: Clash of cultures — differing STYLE OF INQUIRY?

= objectivity (researchers try to stay neutral; self-correcting via peer review and "triangulation" — confidence grows as multiple researchers replicate findings).

Advisors (trial consultants, amicus briefs, expert witnesses)

Evaluators (formative/summative)

Reformers (actively push for change, stepping away from pure objectivity).

Q: What are the 3 main roles psychologists play in psych & law?

formative and summative evaluations

Both come up under the "Evaluators" role — psychologists assessing whether a social/legal program actually works. The example from the slides: does a juvenile detention job-training intervention reduce recidivism rates?

Formative evaluation

ongoing info to adjust a program while it's running.

happens while a program is running. It asks "how is this working (or not)?" and provides ongoing feedback so adjustments can be made in real time. Context: mid-program check-ins, continuous improvement.

summative evaluation

sums up whether a program met its goals overall (continue or abandon).

happens after (or at a defined endpoint). It asks "did this work overall?" and sums up whether the program met its goals — used to decide whether to continue or abandon it. Context: end-of-program judgment calls, funding/policy decisions.

Expert testimony,

cross-disciplinary education,

amicus curiae briefs,

broad dissemination of research,

influencing legislatures/public policy.

What are the 5 pathways psychologists use to influence the legal system?

No

Q: Federal Rules of Evidence Rule 702 — can expert witnesses determine guilt?

Expert witnesses

_______ offer general scientific findings (e.g., "95% of people with X do Y"); it's up to the judge/jury to decide guilt/credibility. The judge decides if _______ testimony is admissible at all.

Daubert v. Merrell Dow

GE Co. v. Joiner

Kumho Tire v. Carmichael

What are the 3 cases in the Daubert Trilogy

Together: they delegate authority to the trial judge to evaluate admissibility.

Daubert v. Merrell Dow

the first and most important case in the Daubert Trilogy.

Case background: the Dauberts sued Merrell Dow, claiming a morning-sickness drug (Bendectin) caused their child's birth defects. The plaintiffs' scientific evidence didn't meet the older admissibility standard used at the time, so the case became about how judges should decide if expert scientific testimony gets into court at all.

What it established: judges (not juries) serve as gatekeepers for scientific testimony — they decide up front whether expert evidence is reliable enough to even be presented. It set out 4 factors for judges to weigh:

GE Co. v. Joiner

— appellate courts should defer to the trial judge's ruling on whether to admit or exclude expert scientific testimony. Basically: once a trial judge makes a call on admissibility (using the Daubert factors), a higher court shouldn't easily overturn that decision just because they might've ruled differently

Kumho Tire v. Carmichael

— trial judge's authority extends to ALL expert testimony, not just scientific.

the third case in the Daubert Trilogy.

Case background: a tire blew out, causing a fatal accident. The plaintiffs brought in a tire-failure expert whose testimony was based on experience/technical judgment rather than hard science (no formal testing, no peer review, etc.) — so it raised the question of whether Daubert's gatekeeping role even applies to that kind of "non-scientific" expert.

What it established: the trial judge's gatekeeping authority extends to ALL expert testimony, not just testimony based on hard science. Even technical or experience-based expertise (engineering judgment, trade skill, etc.) has to go through the same reliability screening as scientific testimony.

Basically, Kumho closed a loophole: it stopped experts from avoiding Daubert scrutiny just by claiming their expertise wasn't "scientific."

note: gatekeeping authority is judges ability to decide whether testimony is reliable or not

A: (1) Can the theory/technique be tested/falsified,

(2) has it been peer-reviewed,

(3) reliability/error rate,

(4) general acceptance in the relevant scientific community.

Q: What are the 4 Daubert factors?

Note: research (Gatowski et al., 2001) shows most judges can't clearly define all 4 and often base decisions on the expert's credentials instead.

Conduit-educator

Philosopher-advocate

Hired gun

Q: Saks (1990) — 3 roles expert witnesses can play?

Conduit-educator

(presents accurate science, most in line with APA guidelines),

Philosopher-advocate

(lets personal values shape testimony)

Hired gun

(shapes testimony to help whoever's paying).

amicus curiae briefs

a written argument submitted by someone who isn't a direct party to the case, summarizing relevant research/findings for the court to consider.

advantages over expert testimony are:

Written by a team of researchers not directly involved in the case, often reviewed by a professional organization, and cite the underlying studies directly.

Example: Brown v. Board of Education (1954) — first case to explicitly cite social science research; brief signed by 32 social scientists, cited the Clark & Clark (1947) doll study.

Criminal burden of proof

beyond a reasonable doubt (higher standard); filed by the state/federal government; right to an attorney; punishment = incarceration/fines/death.

Civil burden of proof

preponderance of evidence "more likely than not" — greater than 50% that the claim is true.

); filed by a private party; must hire your own attorney; punishment = monetary/behavior change.

Objective and Subjective justice

You can have one without the other — e.g., a guilty person convicted via a biased procedure achieves _______ but not __________justice.

Objective justice

outcome-based, concerned with accuracy (did the guilty get convicted?).

Subjective justice

process-based, concerned with perceived legitimacy/fairness.

Distributive justice

= "who gets what" (equality = same for everyone; equity = divided by need).

Procedural justice

how it's decided who gets what / how people are treated."

Restorative justice

repairing harm caused by crime, involving all stakeholders (victims, offenders, community).

Instrumental justice theory

= theory that we follow the law to avoid punishment/get rewards (outcome-based cost-benefit — "I don't murder because I don't want prison").

Procedural Justice theory

theory that we follow the law because we see legal authorities/the law as legitimate (process-based — "I don't murder because the law itself is legitimate").

Legitimacy

Tom Tyler's Process-Based Model

— what is_____________ and how is it formed?

______________ = internalized belief the law "ought" to be followed + trust that authorities have your best interest at heart.

Formed through perceived lawfulness, fairness, and effectiveness during direct or vicarious interactions with authorities.

decision making

one of the 2 dimensions of Procedural Justice

Quality of ____________ (fair, consistent, neutral, fact-based, transparent)

interpersonal treatment

one of the 2 dimensions of Procedural Justice

Quality of _______________(dignity, respect, voice, trustworthiness).

No

Q: Does outcome matter as much as procedural justice evaluations?

A: _____ — PJ evaluations are 5–6x MORE important than the actual outcome (Tyler & Huo, 2002). Classic example: getting a ticket but being treated respectfully leads to viewing the system as legitimate despite the bad outcome.

legitimate

Q: What outcomes are associated with perceiving the system as more______?

A: Voluntary/self-regulatory behavior, compliance (less recidivism), decision acceptance, deference to police/judges — without needing incentives or sanctions.

true

Q: True or false — most people experience at least one traumatic event in their lifetime?

(Resick et al., 2001). Trauma can be highly emotional at multiple points: the event itself, deciding whether to get involved in the CJS, and interviews with authorities.

barriers to disclosing trauma

A: Stigma management, being an "unacknowledged victim" (meets the legal definition but resists the "victim" label), cultural values, and negative reactions from others. Reactions from confidants after disclosure strongly predict long-term wellbeing — negative reactions predict worse psychopathology (Dworkin et al., 2019).

do

Q: DO's and AVOID's when a friend discloses trauma to you?

listen, ask how to help, be non-judgmental, use their language, engage empathy not sympathy, be OK with silence, assess for urgency, refer (don't rescue), follow up later.

don’t

DO's and AVOID's when a friend discloses trauma to you?

asking why they didn't run/fight/leave, blaming questions, taking control, "silver lining" phrases ("at least…").

ARREST , EXCEPTIONAL MEANS

Q: Per the FBI UCR, when is a criminal case "closed"?

A: By_________(arrested + charged + case turned over to court — all 3 needed) OR by ________________________ (suspect identified, enough evidence gathered, exact location known, but some circumstance outside police control prevents arrest).

A: Under 50% (~44–48%)

Q: Per the NCVS, roughly what % of violent crimes get reported to police?

true

t or f

— most violent crimes are NOT reported. Violent crimes (~48%) are reported more often than property crimes (~30%).

for

Q: Most commonly cited reasons for/against reporting crimes (NCVS)?

_________prevent future violence, stop the offender.

against

Q: Most commonly cited reasons for/against reporting crimes (NCVS)?

______ "dealt with in another way/personal matter" was the single biggest reason (34%), followed by not important enough, police wouldn't/couldn't help.

Knowing the perpetrator is one of the strongest, most consistent predictors of NOT reporting.

factors that make someone less likely to report a crime

A: Viewing police as ineffective/illegitimate, perceiving the crime as less serious, knowing the perpetrator, fearing retaliation, wanting to hide own illegal activity, being advised not to by family/friends, fear of being labeled a "snitch."

true

t or f

A: About 1 in 1,000 Black men are killed by police — the highest-risk group (2.5x more likely than white men); peak risk age is 20–35 across all racial groups.

Q: How is lifetime risk of being killed by police influenced by race/gender?

negative police contact

Long-term effects of _____________

A: Decreased wellbeing, lower educational attainment for Black/Latinx youth (lower GPA, higher absenteeism, less college enrollment), intergenerational trauma transmission (epigenetic effects), and less future crime reporting. Effects occur through both personal AND vicarious (witnessed/online) contact.

shooter bias

A: People mistake harmless objects for weapons at higher rates for Black vs. White targets, especially under ambiguous conditions.

implicit bias

issues combating ____________

___________are hard to combat directly — training alone shows limited effects. Related: non-Black perceivers view young Black men as bigger/stronger/more capable of harm than same-sized White men.

APA (2020) recommendations for policing reform

A: Promote community policing, ban chokeholds/strangleholds, invest in Crisis Intervention Teams, strengthen mandatory data collection on shootings, bolster research, discourage policies that trigger implicit/explicit bias, increase mental health professionals in agencies.

A: Body cameras (mixed results — halves use of force when worn consistently but may not improve perceptions), community policing (procedural-justice based), and procedural justice TRAINING for officers (a one-day training reduced both complaints and use of force in Chicago — Wood et al., 2020).

evidence-based policing practices that show promise

A: Close DA relationships, union contracts/"bill of rights" protections, qualified immunity (Harlow v. Fitzgerald), and officers fired for misconduct frequently getting rehired at other (often smaller) agencies — where they're more likely to reoffend.

Q: Key legal challanges to police accountability?

Ronald Cotton case

A: Perpetrator = Bobby Poole. Wrongly convicted innocent suspect = _________, identified by victim Jennifer Thompson (who later misidentified him again — an example of unconscious transference).

mistaken eyewitness ID

A: ~70% of wrongful convictions involved mistaken eyewitness ID. This does NOT mean 70% of witnesses/IDs/lineups are wrong — it means mistaken ID is the leading factor among wrongful convictions that were later overturned via DNA.

Q: #1 factor in DNA exoneration wrongful convictions, and what the stat means?

Perpetrator

= who actually did it.

suspect

= who police think did it (may be guilty or innocent).

foil

known-innocent filler for fairness

one

A lineup should have only ______ suspect.

foil

If a_______ is ID'd, no innocent person is at risk bc they know he’s innocent

Retrospective archival analyses

field studies

laboratory (mock crime) experiments

3 ways to study eyewitness memory

Retrospective archival analyses

— Study real, closed crime cases/files after the fact to see when witnesses "got it right" vs. "made mistakes." Ex: reviewing old case records for patterns in eyewitness errors. Limitation: ground-truth problem (can never be 100% sure who's actually guilty) and correlation ≠ causation.

Field studies

— Look at real lineup data as it happens in actual police stations (not solved cases, just what witnesses do). Ex: tracking whether witnesses pick the suspect, a foil, or no one across real lineups. Limitation: same ground-truth problem, plus you can't measure "false IDs" since police assume the suspect is guilty going in.

Laboratory (mock crime) experiments

— Staged/simulated crimes (video, actors, etc.) where researchers control conditions and KNOW the true guilt/innocence. Ex: participants watch a staged robbery, then try to ID the "perpetrator" from a lineup. The only method that allows causal conclusions, since there's no ground-truth problem — but may not fully capture real-world stress/emotion (limits generalizability).

Only LAB experiments

archival & field studies suffer from the "ground-truth problem"

which way to study eyewitness memory allows causal inference?

Causal inference = being able to say "X causes Y," not just "X is correlated with Y."

To actually prove causation, you need to rule out other explanations for why two things are linked — basically show that changing X is what's directly responsible for the change in Y, not some other outside factor.

ground-truth problem

(we can never be 100% certain of real guilt/innocence).

Target-present lineup

= guilty suspect/perpetrator is in the lineup.

target-absent lineups

= innocent suspect stands in for the perpetrator.

Target absent lineup

A FALSE ID (picking the innocent suspect in a TA lineup)

is the only error type that risks convicting an innocent person.

which error risks convicting an innocent person?

between target present and target absent

Estimator variables

= factors the justice system has no control over (weapon focus, cross-racial ID, stress, lighting).

system variables

= factors under the system's control (lineup procedures, questioning style). Reform recommendations target system variables since they can actually be changed.

weapon focus

A: Attention concentrates on a weapon (via arousal/threat OR unusual-item hypotheses), reducing attention to peripheral details like the perpetrator's face — generally reduces ID accuracy.

Own-race bias

People are significantly MORE accurate identifying suspects of their own race, less accurate across races

cross-racial ID effect

where ppl are less accurate identifying members of other races— replicated across cultures, worse under uncertainty. It's an interaction between witness race and perpetrator race.

Unconscious transference

A: A memory error where a witness misidentifies a familiar-but-innocent bystander encountered in a different context, misattributing that familiarity to guilt.

could happen in repeatedly showing witness pictures in lineup; repeated lineup

enhance, disrupt

Stress and memory (Yerkes-Dodson)?

A: Inverted U-shape: mild-moderate acute stress can __________memory (mobilizes attention). Major/chronic stress ____________ memory, especially retrieval. Morgan et al. (2004): soldiers under high-stress mock interrogation had lower correct ID rates (.38) and higher incorrect ID rates (.58) vs. low-stress (.71 correct/.25 incorrect).

Yes

Q: Are emotional memories remembered better

distinctiveness

emotional memories are remembered better — due to the event's __________

amygdala activation strengthening memory traces, and more rehearsal/thinking about emotional events.

Pre-lineup interview

evidence-based suspicion

double-blind administration

adequate fillers

unbiased pre-lineup instructions

immediate confidence statement

video-recording

avoid repeated IDs

avoid showups.

some system-variable recommendations?

Misinformation effect

(Loftus & Palmer, 1974)?

A: Misleading post-event info decreases accuracy. Participants asked how fast cars were going when they "smashed" later falsely recalled broken glass (34%) far more than those asked about cars that "hit" (14%) — no broken glass existed at all. Note: accurate post-event info can actually increase accuracy.

funnel approach

the _____________ to interviewing?

A: Free recall first (no cues — "tell me everything"), then cued-recall (open-ended follow-ups), then direct/specific questions last — to avoid introducing bias.

FLETC interview

= Federal Law Enforcement Training Center

interviewer-led, follows a fixed script — intro, rapport, open-ended questions, summary/recap, close.

Cognitive Interview

witness-led, uses context reinstatement (mentally putting the witness back in the scene) to jog memory — the version most police actually use.

used pictures and drawings at times

Evidence-based suspicion

A: There should be real evidence linking a suspect to a crime before a lineup.

Base rate problem

: many jurisdictions require no evidence standard to put someone in a lineup — up to 40% of lineups had no prior evidence against the suspect. Low __________ increase misidentification risk.

Double-blind administration

A: Neither witness NOR administrator knows who the suspect is (prevents cueing).

If truly ___________ isn't possible, use an equivalent procedure like computerized or envelope-method presentation.

Computerized

software shows the lineup, so the human administrator doesn't control or see who's being pointed to in real time — no chance to cue.

Envelope alternative

: administrator is handed a sealed packet and genuinely doesn't know which photo is the suspect, so they can't leak it even by accident.

Lineup fillers

A: Only 1 suspect + at least 5 appropriate fillers.

If the suspect stands out, pick rate increases unfairly (Buckhout, 1975; also Ralph Armstrong and Uriah Frank Courtney cases).

true

t or f

If the suspect stands out, pick rate increases unfairly

Resemble-to-suspect

filler strategy

= foils similar to the suspect's actual appearance

Match-to-description

filler strategy

= foils matching the witness's verbal description

blended approach

(match-to-description unless too vague, then resemble-to-suspect).

best filler strategy

Simultaneous lineup

lineup that is (all at once) is standard practice and MORE accurate overall (Wixted et al., 2015).

sequential lineups

(one at a time) reduces both correct AND false ID rates — a large tradeoff — so it remains disputed.

pre-lineup instructions

Q: Unbiased ____________ should include?

A: That the administrator doesn't know the suspect, the perpetrator may or may not be present ("none of the above" is valid), the witness isn't obligated to pick anyone, a confidence rating will follow, and the investigation continues regardless.