Areas of Research
Generally speaking, any research that combines psychological principles with legal applications or contexts could be considered legal psychology (although research involving clinical psychology, e.g., mental illness, competency, insanity defense, offender profiling, etc., is typically categorized as forensic psychology, and not legal psychology). For a time, legal psychology researchers were primarily focused on issues related to eyewitness testimony and jury decision-making; so much so, that the editor of Law and Human Behavior, the premier legal psychology journal, implored researchers to expand the scope of their research and move on to other areas.
There are several legal psychology journals, including Law and Human Behavior, Psychology, Public Policy and Law, Psychology, Crime, and Law, and Journal of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law that focus on general topics of criminology, and the criminal justice system. In addition, research by legal psychologists is regularly published in more general journals that cover both basic and applied research areas.
Read more about this topic: Legal Psychology
Famous quotes containing the words areas of, areas and/or research:
“The ambiguous, gray areas of authority and responsibility between parents and teachers exacerbate the distrust between them. The distrust is further complicated by the fact that it is rarely articulated, but usually remains smoldering and silent.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“The research on gender and morality shows that women and men looked at the world through very different moral frameworks. Men tend to think in terms of “justice” or absolute “right and wrong,” while women define morality through the filter of how relationships will be affected. Given these basic differences, why would men and women suddenly agree about disciplining children?”
—Ron Taffel (20th century)