Researchers Expose Troubling Bias In Forensic Psychology
One of the Original Rorschach Ink Blots Image made by Hermann Rorschach, downloaded from Wikimedia Commons Court psychologists interpret evidence differently depending on who they think hired them. Does your mental health depend on who's paying your psychologist? Clearly not, but a new study has found that psychologists looking at the same evidence will interpret it differently, depending on whom they believed hired them. Bias in psychologists hired to go to court could have an immense impact on defendants' lives. In many cases, psychological evaluations influence decisions about what sentences people deserve. Was the defendant's crime a one-time thing, punishable by a finite prison sentence, or is she a danger to society who should be locked away forever? Should the defendant go to a rehabilitation program as part of his sentence? It's already known, of course, that lawyers may choose to call only experts who support their cases. So there's probably a...