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Forensic Psychologist
Studies the psychology of criminal behavior — profiles criminals, assesses competency, and advises courts.
Did you know?
Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus showed memories can be planted: some people 'remembered' being lost in a shopping mall as kids when it never happened.
How subjects help
- Psychology: Interview someone accused of a crime to understand their thinking and state of mind.
- Law: Explain to a court whether a person truly understands the charges against them.
- Biology: Consider how a brain injury or illness might affect a person's behaviour and choices.
- Statistics: Use research data to judge how likely it is that someone will commit another crime.
A famous name
Hugo Münsterberg: Pioneer of legal psychology; his 1908 book On the Witness Stand showed how witnesses make mistakes.
Try it yourself: Which words does memory keep?
- Write a list of 20 everyday words (cat, apple, ball, tree…) and number them 1 to 20.
- Read the list aloud at one word per second. As soon as you finish, ask everyone to write down every word they remember, in any order.
- For each position 1 to 20, count how many people remembered that word.
- Draw a bar chart with word position along the bottom. Were the first, middle or last words remembered best?
Psychologists run memory experiments like this to understand how memory works, and forensic psychologists use that knowledge to judge how reliable a witness's memory is likely to be.
Adapted from Neuroscience for Kids (University of Washington): Memory Experiments.
Also try: Play the reward training game.
Known for it in
USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Netherlands