Psychology 3313 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Child Custody, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Forensic Psychology

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 3313
• Professor: Janes

Document Summary

Forensic psychology: a field of psychology that deals with all aspects of human behavior as it relates to the law or legal system. Any application of psychological knowledge or methods to a task faced by the legal system. Tensions between law and psych: psychology"s emphasis on innovation versus law"s stare decisis model. Finding out new info about the world vs. stand by things that were decided. Some cases are won by using past judgments that were decided in similar cases: psychology"s focus on the results of a number of studies versus law"s focus on a single case. Studies need to be replicated to be valid: psychology"s descriptive versus law"s prescriptive discourse. People are obedient in certain circumstance, legal system is just you should or should behave this way: psychology"s probabilistic and tentative conclusions versus law"s emphasis on certainty. You can"t say proved in psych it has to be demonstrated (because it"s not.