For countless years mankind has attempted to construct different ways to detect falsehoods. Being able to detect a lie is crucial in regards to the legal system, as it would play a pivotal role in creating different opportunities for innocence and exoneration. The use of lie detection technology would assist in anti-terrorist objectives, law enforcement, and protect the innocent. It would even be capable of finding the innocence of those in penitentiaries wrongly convicted. This new neuro-inflation phenomenon has the potential to impact the lives and futures of all people. Yet, there are many issues that come with such technology. Similar to the questions raised about older lie detector technology such as the polygraph, new lie detector technology faces a slew of problems in regards to the impact it may have on self-incrimination and privacy. Before being allowed in the legal system such technology must be fully assessed ranging from its sensitivity and reliability to its accuracy and error probability. Currently such technology may not yet be ready to successfully be used in the legal courtrooms of the United State, and they should not be until they are proven to make any type of mistake.
A technology that is beginning to gain prominence in this arena is that of functional magnetic resonance imaging or FMRI. FMRI has been used in research as a way to find what specific parts of the human brain are used for lying and deception. Thus far, there have been two judicial court ruling on whether the use of FMRI as lie detector is justifiable. Many ethical issues come into play when considering the use of such technology in the courtroom, but all these issues heavily depend on the human brain itself. Of course, the human brain is one of...
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...d policies of the use of such technology must be established before the use in judicial areas. Despite these necessary areas needed to be improved upon the potential of FMRI and similar like technologies to be used as lie detectors in American courts is strong and will continue to gain popularity in law communities around the country as they become more reliable.
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Costanzo, M., & Krauss, D. (2012). Forensic and legal psychology: Psychological science applied to law. New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
“ Some Close Encounters of a Mental Kind ” by Stephen Jay Gould is about the tendency for our minds to ‘lie’ to ourselves because of a certain key phrase that can cause people to believe certain events happened. This can be done by altering the types of question you want the victim to hear. It can be a certain modified questions or the way the question are presented to us that can cause our answers to be slightly false.
Kassin, Saul, and Lawrence Wrightsman (Eds.). The Psychology of Evidence and Trial Procedure. Chapter 3. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1985. Print.
Ewing, C., & McCann, J. (2006). Minds on trial: Great cases in law and psychology. NY: Oxford University. pp. 129-139. Retrieved from http://undergrad.floridatechonline.com/Courses/PSY3100/Critical_Reading_Ewing_McCann.pdf
One of the last types of ways investigators are coached to detect deception is in the behavioral attitudes of a person being interviewed such as being unconcerned or over anxious (Kassin, 2005). The success rate of looking for these cues are very successful in telling if an individual is being deceitful and has surpassed any laboratory tests conducted on the subject. The laboratory test however did reveal some interesting facts. The research showed that people who had training and experience did not score better than the control group who received no training. In fact all individuals scored at the chance level with the people who had training scored just above chance or at the chance level. To check if special training in the detection of deception was more accurate a study ...
The act of interrogation has been around for thousands of years. From the Punic Wars to the war in Iraq, interrogating criminals, prisoners or military officers in order to receive advantageous information has been regularly used. These interrogation techniques can range from physical pain to emotional distress. Hitting an individual with a whip while they hang from a ceiling or excessively questioning them may seem like an ideal way to get them to reveal something, but in reality it is ineffective and . This is because even the most enduring individual can be made to admit anything under excruciating circumstances. In the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights there is a provision (“no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself” ) which reflects a time-honored common principle that no person is bound to betray him or herself or can be forced to give incriminating evidence. This ideology of self-incrimination has been challenged heavily over the past s...
Costanzo, M., & Krauss, D. (2012). Forensic and Legal Psychology: Psychological Science Applied to Law. New York: Worth Publishers.
In “The Brain on Trial”, David Eagleman argues that the justice system needs to change due to advances in neuroscience. Eagleman uses a variety of rhetorical strategies to present his viewpoint. The most important one is his use of examples and reasoning. Therefore, by using mostly examples and reasoning, along with direct address to the readers, Eagleman is able to argue that the legal system has to modify its sentencing policies in accordance with advances in neuroscience due to the increase in the amount of accused and/or convicted people who have been found to have harbored some kind of brain disease or damage. In other words, their actions were not entirely voluntary.
Grubin, D., & Madsen, L. (2005). Lie detection and the polygraph: A historical review. Journal
Deception exists in media, among prestigious universities, and perhaps most commonly in the workplace. According to Dunleavy (2010), reasons for deception in the workplace include: competitiveness, conflict, or a response to a supervisor or fellow employee (p. 241). Dunleavy develops hypotheses’, conducts experiments, and collects data to determine what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior as it applies to deception in the workplace. Ultimately, the reason for deceiving and the method in which one deceives, through either withholding (omission) or distortion (commission), directly effects the perception of coworkers’ credibility, power, and trustworthiness (Dunleavy, p.241).
Beginning in the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s forensic psychology originated when a man named James McKeen Cattell conducted a study at Columbia University. During his time learning and coming up with the idea that psychology could be used as a way to solve court cases he did many experiments with his students. In one study he allowed 56 of his students practice eye witness testimonies with a series of questions. He conducted the experiment by asking the students about trees and asked the students to rate their confidence in what they saw and recall what they saw hours later. During this experiment Cattell...
The brain is arguably the most complex part of a human being and is linked to motivations, feelings, and actions. Therefore, when actions of individuals differ from “normal” actions, the brain is brought into question. Repeat killers commit actions that are not “normal” when compared to the general public and therefore research on their brains has been conducted. When comparing scans of everyday citizens’ brains as opposed to the brain of a convicted serial killer, the differences are clear. The two scans differ widely with the prefrontal gray matter of the average person’s, dwarfing that of the murderer’s (Adams). Pr...
Forensic Psychology, which is occasionally referred to as Legal Psychology, originally made its debut in the late 1800’s. A Harvard Professor, Professor Munsterberg, introduced the idea of psychology and law with his book, On the Witness Stand in 1908. Since the inception of the idea of psychology and law there have been proponents, as well as though that have spoken against the theories proposed by Munsterberg’s, along with other scientists, theorists, and psychologists that believed that Forensic Psychology had no standing to be linked to topics of law. This literature review will attempt to identify scholarly articles that trace the origins and the movement that led to Forensics Psychology becoming a specialty within the field of psychology. I will also attempt to explain What is Forensic Psychology as well as the part it plays within the legal system.
Being deceptive, many feel, is a habit that everyone picks up on at a young age; as he or she gets older, the lies get bigger. After extensive research one can see that lying can be spotted by studying background details and information, facial clues, body language, statistics, emotional gestures, remarks or statements, and speech habits. Fredrich Nietzsche sums up the art of reading body language to tell if one is lying by saying, “One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth”(npa).