Cognitive Psychology And Eyewitness Testimony

Roughly 75% of the wrongful convictions for rape and murder, including a number that led to people being scheduled for execution were based on eyewitness testimony. To help eliminate this problem many people in law have taken up an interest in the field of psychology as well. The major focus being on cognitive psychology in law. This area of psychology primary focuses in the areas of human perception and memory. Therefore their research tends to focus on legally relevant questions such as eyewitness identification, the accuracy of memory, and the detection of deception. Overall, these cognitive psychologists can help the accuracy of life or death decisions based on others testimony. The final question every jury needs to know is whether or
not their guilty and a psychologist may sway that decision.

Psychologist who are trained in psychology and law provide psycho-legal research in a variety of areas such as developing metal health, and public policies. The psychologist who work in law are often lawyers themselves.Law and psychology are two separate disciplines, but have much in common. While psychology’s goal is to understand behavior and law’s goal to regulate it, both fields make assumptions about what causes people to act the way they do.