Research Question Development

Criminal psychology is one of the most exciting fields in the social sciences, partly because of the potential to make a difference in public policy and the criminal justice system. A criminal psychologist provides important information about things like why individuals make choices that lead to criminal behavior, or how a program can better help inmates readapt to their communities. Criminal psychologists can also show how eyewitness testimony might or might not be reliable, or how juries perceive certain defendants or cases based on their own cognitive biases. After brainstorming the subjects related to criminal psychology, I came up with the following three research questions:

What psychological factors are related to lower rates of recidivism and/or successful...

With the other two questions, there are sociological variables that complicate the research. I want to focus more exclusively on psychology, and on the cognitive processes involved when law enforcement officers...…& Josephs (2010) found that as many as 82% of people are willing to sign false confessions, even when individual differences are controlled for. The methods and tactics used during police interrogations have a strong bearing on confessions. Although guilty people are more likely than innocent people to confess in general, police tactics can be used to elicit false confessions (Russano, Meissner, Narchet, et al, 2005). Juveniles are especially susceptible to police intimidation tactics and are more prone to false confessions than adults (Honts, Kassin & Craig, 2013). These studies, as well as the Kassin (2015) article, provide an abundance of information for me to…