PSY 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Mug Shot, Environmental Psychology, Forensic Psychology

• School: University of Miami
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 210
• Professor: Rod Gillis

Document Summary

Applied social psychology: the legal system. The entire legal system is a social system and therefore is subject to all fallacies and biases. Police interrogation: leading questions may influence memory. Very easy to change memories by asking questions a certain way: strong emotion reduces accuracy. Traumatized victims have trouble with accuracy: witness wants to help. Children and adults watch video of staged crime where purse is stolen. Neutral instructions: criminal may or may not be in photos. Biased instructions: criminal is in the photos. Both children and adults were more likely to identify innocent people when given biased instructions: solutions to prevent false ids. Police need to be trained to not lead witnesses. Saul kassin, 1996 false confessions: when conditions are right, innocent people will confess to doing something they did not do, experiment. Female assistant read letters aloud while male participants typed them on keyboard. Told not to press alt key or all data would be lost.