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Psychological research has much to offer the criminal justice system. One of the first to recognize this was the German-American psychologist Hugo M¿nsterberg in the early 20th century. The issues M¿nsterberg raised, such as eyewitness misidentification and false confessions, continue to be of paramount importance in the 21st century. The present book reintroduces M¿nsterberg's work to a modern audience, using contemporary research and cases to showhow far we have come-and how far we still have to go-in applying psychological research to the courts.
List of contents
- 1. Overview
- 2. Introduction
- 3. Illusions
- 4. The Memory of the Witness
- 5. The Detection of Crime
- 6. The Traces of Emotions
- 7. Untrue Confessions
- 8. Suggestions in Court
- 9. Hypnotism and Crime
- 10. The Prevention of Crime
- 11. What Münsterberg Got Right, What He Missed, and What We're Missing Now
About the author
Brian H.
Bornstein is Professor Emeritus at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His research interests include jury decision making, the reliability of eyewitness memory, and the application of decision-making principles to everyday judgment tasks. He has authored or edited 20 books and over 170 journal articles and book chapters, and has received grant funding for his research from several agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice. He has received research, mentoring, and book awards from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the American Psychology-Law Society.
Jeffrey S.
Neuschatz is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. His primary research interests include eyewitness memory, line-up identification, secondary confessions, and jury decision making. He has published over 50 articles and chapters, and co-authored the 2012 book
The Psychology of Eyewitness Identification.
Summary
Though widely regarded as a founder of the modern field of psychology and law, German-American psychologist Hugo Münsterberg now century-old ideas and research approaches continue to thrive. In fact, the discipline still grapples with many of the issues raised by Münsterberg in his seminal 1908 book, On the Witness Stand.
Hugo Münsterberg's Psychology and Law: A Historical and Contemporary Assessment makes Münsterberg's enduring insights available to a new generation of scholars and students and presents the "state of the science" on the very concepts that Münsterberg was one of the first to investigate. These include eyewitness memory, deception detection, false confessions, suggestibility, hypnotism, and the causes of criminal behavior. Opening with a brief biography of Münsterberg and a historical overview of the field, the book's organization closely follows that of On the Witness Stand, with each chapter providing a summary of Münsterberg's work followed by a contemporary perspective on the topic. Each chapter asks the reader to consider what we have learned since Münsterberg's time and whether subsequent research has shown him to be right or wrong. The final chapter asks what Münsterberg may have missed, and what we may be missing today. Hugo Münsterberg's Psychology and Law will be of interest to a broad range of scholars, practitioners, and professionals in the legal and mental health fields.
Additional text
Psychology and law is one of the most successful areas in applied psychology. It encompasses cognitive, social, developmental, personality and clinical psychology and covers a range of topics involving legal actors and decision makers at verious levels. Psychology and the law is also a field with a long and distinguished history that contemporary researchers are often woefully unaware of. Bornstein and Neuschatz's book is a wonderful addition because it seamlessly merges the historical with the contemporary. The volume provides a detailed historical analysis of the seminal work of Hugo Münsterberg with present day research in a variety of areas of psychology and law. It is a must have book that belongs on the bookshelf of any serious student of psychology and the law.
