Research

Research Aim

Our lab currently is made up of six doctoral students and three undergraduate honors students. While we all work together to advance understanding of effective courtroom testimony and witness credibility, our research more broadly aims to explore empirically-based perspectives in trial consulting, forensic assessment and testimony, and judicial decision-making. We are invested in studying these areas and view our work as a coming together of science and practice in psychology and law.

The core of our studies has always been investigation of effectiveness of expert testimony. Our past and present studies include examinations of variables of confidence, self-efficacy, likeability, trustworthiness, knowledge, nonverbal communication, gender, and race in perceived credibility. However, our range of studies has expanded well beyond just courtroom testimony.

We have ongoing research on these broader topics:

  • Remorse and regret in defendants
  • The perception of experts as biased “hired guns”
  • Efforts to get out of jury duty
  • Variables associated with pretrial biases in potential jurors
  • The ways in which forensic clinicians’ personal attitudes and beliefs may contaminate conclusions and opinions in forensic assessments and reports
  • The backfire effect in testimony about substance abuse and mental illness as evidence in capital sentencing hearings
  • “Thin slices” research about quantity and length of testimony as an influencing factor in judgments of testimony in insanity plea evidence
  • PTSD in veterans as a variable in plea bargaining and sentencing
  • Naturalistic observations of smiling behaviors and their effects on credibility of actual testimony
  • Studies of actual jurors and live testimony paradigms as opposed to psychology undergraduates and recorded testimony as simulated jurors and evidence
  • The influence of graphic evidence on juror decision-making
  • The double stigma of being a “mentally ill criminal”