Finding the Truth in the Courtroom: Dealing with Deception, Lies, and Memories
Henry Otgaar and Mark L. Howe
Abstract
The focus of this book is on how legal professionals, legal/forensic psychologists, and memory researchers can decide when statements or identifications are based on truthful or fabricated experiences and whether if fabricated, can we distinguish between lies, deception, and false memories. The ultimate focus is to assemble recent experimental work and case studies in which deception or false memory plays a dominant role. That is, in many criminal trials, forensic technical evidence is lacking and triers of fact must rely on the reliability of eyewitness statements, identifications, and testim ... More
The focus of this book is on how legal professionals, legal/forensic psychologists, and memory researchers can decide when statements or identifications are based on truthful or fabricated experiences and whether if fabricated, can we distinguish between lies, deception, and false memories. The ultimate focus is to assemble recent experimental work and case studies in which deception or false memory plays a dominant role. That is, in many criminal trials, forensic technical evidence is lacking and triers of fact must rely on the reliability of eyewitness statements, identifications, and testimony. However, such reports can be riddled with deceptive statements or erroneous recollections. Based on such considerations, the question arises as to how one should weigh such eyewitness accounts given the theoretical and empirical knowledge in this field. Topics discussed are, for example, related to the susceptibility to suggestive pressure (e.g., “Under which circumstances are children or adults the most vulnerable to suggestion?”), the fabrication of symptoms (e.g., “How to detect whether PTSD symptoms are malingered?”), or the detection of deceit (e.g., “Which paradigms are promising in deception detection?”). By using this approach, this book unites diverse streams of research (i.e., deception, malingering, false memory) that are involved in the reliability of eyewitness statements.
Keywords:
deception,
memory,
legal cases,
expert testimony,
malingering,
wrongful conviction,
misinformation,
suggestibility,
neurobiological,
false memory
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190612016 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2017 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190612016.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Henry Otgaar, editor
Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University
Mark L. Howe, editor
Professor of Psychology, City University London
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