Chapter One
Introduction to Forensic
Psychology
Contents
– Nature and Definition of Forensic Psychology
– The relationship between Psychology and Law
– Historical development of forensic psychology
– The Importance of psychologists in the legal setting
– Theories of forensic psychology
– Application of psychology to courts and judiciary-
legal arenas
1. Definition of Forensic Psychology
• Forensic = Forum = room for public debate, such
as a court of law
• Forensic & criminal Ѱ, Correctional Ѱ, Prison Ѱ,
investigative Ѱ, psychology and the law and legal
psychology.
• The Ѱ applied to the work of courts of law (Strict).
• It include all aspects of criminal justice (General
Definition).
• It is concerned with the very wide discipline of Ѱ
applied to the law, legal system, victims and law
breakers.
• It is an applied professional discipline with an
emphasis on practice
• The twin skills of ‘practitioner’ and ‘researcher’
are involved in the development of forensic
psychology.
• Practitioners are routinely expected to pursue
research.
• Forensic psychology is a very new and exciting
area; it seems exciting because of the immense
range of its applications
• For instance:
•Child custody decisions
Child abuse of an emotional, physical and sexual
nature
Matters of competency to stand trial
Jury selection
Alleviating Police burnout
Expert witness
Advising legislators on public policy
Treatment of chronic offenders
• What do What do forensic psychologists do?
Applying psychological theory to criminal
investigation
Understanding psychological problems associated
with criminal behaviour
Modifying offender behaviours
Providing hard research evidence to support
practice
Giving evidence in court; advising parole
boards and mental health tribunals; crime
analysis.
Future of Forensic Psychology
FEW POTENTIALLY REWARDING ASPECTS
•Helping Others
• Opportunities - There are many different
subspecialties within the field.
• Changing Environment - When working in
prisons and with juvenile offenders, every day
can be different.
• Recognition - Those who act as expert witnesses
are usually well known.
• Personal Fulfillment - When conducting
research, psychologists' findings are often
beneficial to society.
FEW DRAW BACKS AND FRUSTRATING
ASPECTS
• Continuing Education
• Risk of Injury
• Teamwork
• Pay
• Burnout Risk
Historical Development of Forensic
Psychology
• 14th C - acceptance of psychological aspects of offending, such
as insanity into law
• 16th C - The acceptance of expert witnesses – especially
medical experts into law .
• 18th C - Development of systematic criminology.
• Professionalization of medicine, medical concepts of mental
illness and social problems.
• 19th C -Development out of Wundt’s laboratory at Leipzig, i.e.
in the origins of modern psychology.
• 20th C - Development of the profession of clinical psychology
to vie with psychiatry.
• 21th C - Massive expansion of academic psychology and
psychological practice after World War 2.
The Role of Psychologists in The Legal Setting
• Crime and criminal behaviors
• Police investigation
• Prosecution
• Court decision making process
• Prison settings
• Rehabilitation and reintegration
Theories of Forensic Psychology
• Theories of crime
• Social Psychology theories
• Theories of fear of crime and victimology
• Theories of judicial decision making
• Theories of penology
Theories of crime
Classification of theories
I. Biological theories of crime
• Freud believed that the majority of what we
experience in our lives, the underlying emotions,
beliefs, feelings, and impulses are not available to
us at a conscious level.
• He believed that most of what drives us is buried in
our unconscious.
Structural Model
Id and Violence
Following characteristics are frequent in
individuals with id dominated personality.
Failure to think of consequences
Impulsive behavior.
Inability to empathize with the victim.
Thrill seeking.
Irresponsible behavior.
Superego and Violence
• Inflated super ego can result in different aspects:
Crime and Punishment
• If parents hit/beat them, they will hit and torture other
people and would take revenge.
• Punishing oneself
• An individual trying to protect others from violence might
predispose oneself to self-injury(falsely confesses).
Ego and Violence
• Inflated Ego can result in calculated crimes like
Seeking power.
Can help maximize gain and minimize loss
Instincts
• Freud believed that humans were driven by two conflicting
central desires Eros and Thanatos.
Instincts & Violence
Eros
• Eros usually commit the crime that involve the
acquiring of some thing like theft of any kind,
robbery, some sexual crimes or illegal land
occupations e.t.c
Thanatos
• Is in volved in the crime and violent behaviour where
destruction, demolition, devastation and death are
involved.
• Violent rape is not associated with sexual instincts
rather destruction and death wish is involved in such
cases.
Following types of crime usually a result of thanatos:
Destruction of any thing
Murder
Rape
Torture
Terrorism
Suicide
Psychosexual Stages and Violence
Fixations in different stages
• Unconscious fixations at
different psychosexual stages
have serious implications for
violent behavior in later life.
Fixation at Oral Stage
- If the child was underfed - manipulate others to fulfill
his needs rather than maturing to independence.
- Overly indulged child - Narcissism.
Fixation at Anal Stage
• The Anal retentive personality
– The person is generally stubborn and perfectionist.
• The Anal explosive personality:
- Expulsive violent types of people are usually
involved in terrorism.
Fixation at Phallic Stage
Child compares the genetals with the same sex
parent and start feeling:
Inferiority
Inadequacy a person who fits the terrorist’s profile
Defense Mechanism
and Violence
• Displacement
• Rationalization
• Regression
• Projection
• Denial
BEHAVIORIST PERSPECTIVE AND VIOLENCE
I. Man learns just like an animal
[Link] behaves just like an animal
• Classical conditioning – stimulus
generalization
• Operant conditioning - Implications for
violence
• Punishment has profound implications for
violence.
• Modeling of violence
Social learning theory and criminal behavior
• Albert Bandura believed that aggression is
learned through a process called behavior
modeling.
• He believed that individuals do not actually
inherit violent tendencies, but they modeled
them after three principles (Bandura, 1976:
p.204).
Social Psychology theories
Attribution theories
Social Influence theories
Theories of Social relations
Theories of social perception
Attribution theories
• Situational(external) Attribution:
• Attributing behavior to the environment.
• Dispositional (internal attribution):
– Attributing behavior to the person’s disposition
and traits
Theories of attribution
• Jones and Davis (1965) correspondence
interference theory. This theory tries to
explain the specific traits or dispositions that
remain fairly stable over time in an individual
• Three specific types of information’s people
use in understanding other’s behavior.
– Low Social desirability
– Non common effects
– Freedom of choice
Cont…
• Kelly’s (1972) co variation model
– . At times, people may also think both causes in
combination might have contributed for a
particular behavior
– people use three major sources of information to
understand the causes of others behavior
– Consensus
– Consistency
– Distinctiveness:
Attribution biases
Discussion point
• What is attribution bias?
• When and why we make bias in attribution?
Cont…
• Fundamental Attribution Error: observers
underestimate situational influences and
overestimate dispositional influences upon
others behavior
• The actor–observer effect: we tend to
attribute other people’s behavior to
dispositional factors, we tend to attribute our
own behavior to situational factors
Cont…
• The self-serving bias: we take credit for our
successes (so view them internally), but not
for failure (so see failure as due to external
factors).
Social Influence theories
Theories of Social relations
• What are the gender differences in aggression?
• What is the frustration-aggression hypothesis?
• The frustration-aggression hypothesis suggests
that aggression is caused by frustration
resulting from blocked goals.
• How does anger relate to frustration and
aggression, and what factors contribute to
anger?
• A modified version of the frustration-aggression
hypothesis suggests that frustration does not
lead to aggression unless a negative affect such
as anger is aroused.
• How does the family socialize a child into
aggression?
What is the role of culture in aggression?
• What role do the media play in aggression?
Theories of social perception
Social perception
• it is the way we seek to know and understand
others persons and events.
• It can be classified in to two: impression
formation and attribution.
• Impression formation: is often based on rapid
assessments of salient and observable quality and
behavior in others
– is a dynamic process with the judgments being
constantly updated in the occurrence of new
information.