Bias in Forensic Psychology

Forensic Psychology
According to the American Psychological Association (2013), forensic psychology is the application of clinical specialties to the legal arena. Forensic psychology combines the practice of psychology and the practice of law. A professional working in this field will use their psychological expertise and apply it to the judicial system. The interest of the forensic psychologist is to understand why certain behaviors occur and to also assist in minimizing and preventing such behaviors. They do thin within the criminal justice system. The forensic psychologist will apply their knowledge of psychology and use it to assist in narrowing down a list of suspects or provide the motive behind a crime (Guarnera, Murrie, & Boccaccini, 2017). There are cases where the evidence presented by a forensic psychologist will be the last piece of the puzzle when attempting to convict a criminal. The forensic psychologist will work directly with attorneys, offenders, defendants, victims, families, pupils, or patients within the state's correction facilities. The overall duty of a forensic psychologist is to assess an individual who is involved in one way or another with the legal system.
Since the forensic psychologist will be working with individuals involved with the justice system, they need to have multiple qualifications and training. The forensic psychologist should have training in law and forensic psychology. However, the most vital skills the forensic psychologist should have are solid clinical skills. To become a forensic psychologist, one should have graduate training in the field of psychology and they should also hold a doctorate degree in the field of psychology. It is also vital to have some education or training in the law or they could even have a Juris Doctor. Juris Doctor is the degree earned by attorneys. For a student to become a forensic psychologist, they should first earn a bachelor's degree in psychology or any other behavioral science. This will be followed by a masters or doctors’ degree. In the case of forensic psychologists, most of them will opt to do a doctorate degree in forensic psychology (Bartol & Bartol, 2017). Once the individual has completed these training, they will be required to earn their license and this differs between states. Each state has its licensure requirements but the basic ones are that the individual should have a minimum of a doctorate in psychology, supervised hours, and an exam.
Forensic psychologists work primarily in the office, crime scenes, and in the courtroom. They also collaborate with detectives, police officers, and other forensic scientists to offer their professional opinion (Bartol & Bartol, 2017). Forensic psychologists might also work in prisons, jails, and juvenile detention centers. Here they will be charged with interacting with the detainees and determining what their motive was for committing the crime. They will also be required to assess the detainees to establish their mental abilities. Overall, the work performed by the forensic psychologist will have some criminal justice bearings. They are required to assess, evaluate, and treat individuals who have committed crimes or are victims of crime.
Research in the Field of Forensic Psychology
Forensic psychologists can also be used as expert witnesses where their expertise would be sought to explain why a crime could have occurred. For the research aspect, forensic psychologists will conduct research and analyze other professionals' research in an attempt to figure out what motivates criminals to commit crimes, the common traits certain criminals have, and the motivation behind committing a crime for a criminal. Just like any other scientist, forensic psychologists are also required to conduct research to determine aspects of their work that remain mysterious or have not been properly defined. They also need to conduct research that would be helpful to other forensic psychologists in the performance of their work. For example, the study conducted by MacLean, Neal, Morgan, and Murrie (2019), which aimed to determine the extent to which forensic psychologists are familiar with well-known biases. The study was effective and it contributed towards increasing knowledge within the field as the study results could be used by other forensic psychologists to identify biases, they are not aware of them and identify ways of avoiding those biases (MacLean et al., 2019).
Bias creates errors in judgment and this can affect psychological evaluations leading to erroneous opinions and diagnoses. Bias errors can result in the wrongful sentencing of a person and the courts would not have the ability to determine if there was bias at play. There is little research addressing bias in the field of forensic psychology. Like any other profession, bias and judgment errors are problematic and in the forensic psychology field, they can undermine the justice system. When a criminal is jailed based on the opinion of a forensic psychologist, the criminal justice system believes the professional is giving expert advice and they have no reason to doubt what they say. However, there might be instances where the professional’s advice is biased. In this case, the defendant's life would be ruined if the courts determine the case based on the biases of the professional.
The study made use of questionnaires and it recruited 120 forensic psychologists across the 50 states within the United States. The respondents comprised of 45.8% female and 39% male with a mean age of 55.24 years and they had a mean of 18.51 years of experience in the field (MacLean et al., 2019). Each question was timed and the researchers made use of sham biases to account for the tendency of the respondents to agree with the question being asked. It is also a good way of ensuring the study is reliable. The respondents were given multiple-choice questions and they had to select the appropriate answer. This was done to avoid the overreliance on self-report. The questions asked aimed at determining if the respondents were familiar with the various biases. The study results indicated that the respondents were familiar with many actual biases and most of them indicated they were not familiar with the sham biases. Some biases were clearly familiar to all the respondents like confirmation bias. Others like the bias blind spot and adversarial allegiance that were recently introduced were only familiar to about half the respondents (MacLean et al., 2019).
Due to bias, the objectivity of the clinician will decrease and this will increase the likelihood of them making an erroneous opinion. This has led to the use of blinding techniques as a way of eliminating or reducing bias in legal judgment. The researchers established that the use of introspection, which has been shown many times by other researchers to be ineffective in decreasing bias was overwhelmingly endorsed by the respondents. Therefore, forensic psychologists should avoid using introspection and instead make use of behavioral evidence. The respondents indicated they were aware of the biases and most of them were able to determine the sham biases to be sham and not real biases (MacLean et al., 2019). However, there was no way of telling if the knowledge of the biases translates to reducing them when the forensic psychologist is performing his or her work. While this is good, it does not mean that they can effectively mitigate against them when they are performing their actual work. Therefore, it is vital that a study builds upon this current study and it examines forensic psychologists at work to determine how they apply the mitigation strategies they have mentioned. Future studies should look into examining the presence of biases and ways of mitigating against the effects of the biases in forensic evaluations.


References
American Psychological Association. (2013). Specialty guidelines for forensic psychology. The American Psychologist, 68(1), 7.
Bartol, C. R., & Bartol, A. M. (2017). Introduction to forensic psychology: Research and application. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Guarnera, L. A., Murrie, D. C., & Boccaccini, M. T. (2017). Why do forensic experts disagree? Sources of unreliability and bias in forensic psychology evaluations. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 3(2), 143.
MacLean, N., Neal, T., Morgan, R. D., & Murrie, D. C. (2019). Forensic clinicians’ understanding of bias. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law.