Richard Waites - Scientific Study of Courtroom Decision Making

Scientific Study of Courtroom Decision Making

Waites’ concentrated exposure to the courtroom at an early age, coupled with his undergraduate and graduate study in the unconventional field of humanistic psychology greatly influenced Waites to ignore conventional separations between law and psychology. He developed a presumption that there can be no practical separation between the legally related behavior of people and the psychology (mental and behavioral processes) associated with legally related behavior. This presumption has featured prominently in all his published and private works.

Humanistic psychology is a school of psychology that emerged in the 1950s in reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis. It is explicitly concerned with the human dimension of psychology and the human context for the development of psychological theory. These matters are often summarized by the five postulates of Humanistic Psychology given by James Bugental (1964), mainly that:

1. Human beings cannot be reduced to components.
2. Human beings have in them a uniquely human context.
3. Human consciousness includes an awareness of oneself in the context of other people.
4. Human beings have choices and non desired responsibilities.
5. Human beings are intentional, they seek meaning, value and creativity.

The working theories about human behavior and mental processes inherent in the field of humanistic psychology seemed to have a natural application to actual courtroom practice in Waites’ view. Consequently, Waites' early work in psychology concentrated on the study of the thought processes of judges, jurors, and arbitrators in the resolution of the moral dilemmas posed by pending court cases. His research was intended as an application of the general theories of moral psychology, moral development and moral reasoning developed by Lawrence Kohlberg, famous for his development of the stages of moral development now commonly recognized in developmental psychology.

Waites' study of moral reasoning in the courtroom progressed to the application of advanced research techniques used in other areas of psychology, such as experimental psychology, cognitive psychology, and educational psychology to better understand the decision-making processes of judges, jurors, and arbitrators. The goals of Waites' research were to discover ways to assist courtroom decision-makers in making more informed decisions, thereby benefitting the effectiveness of the judicial system in the United States, and to assist trial attorneys and litigants in developing their most persuasive presentations in the courtroom, thereby improving the effectiveness of the trial advocacy process.