Bias in Forensic Psychology Reaction Paper

Forensic Psychology

According to the American Psychological Association (2013), forensic psychology is the application of clinical specialties to the legal arena. Forensic psychology combines the practice of psychology and the practice of law. A professional working in this field will use their psychological expertise and apply it to the judicial system. The interest of the forensic psychologist is to understand why certain behaviors occur and to also assist in minimizing and preventing such behaviors. They do thin within the criminal justice system. The forensic psychologist will apply their knowledge of psychology and use it to assist in narrowing down a list of suspects or provide the motive behind a crime (Guarnera, Murrie, & Boccaccini, 2017). There are cases where the evidence presented by a forensic psychologist will be the last piece of the puzzle when attempting to convict a criminal. The forensic psychologist will work directly with attorneys, offenders, defendants, victims, families, pupils, or patients within the state's correction facilities. The overall duty of a forensic psychologist is to assess an individual who is involved in one way or another with the legal system.

Since the forensic psychologist will be working with individuals involved with the justice system, they need to have multiple qualifications and training. The forensic psychologist should have training in law and forensic psychology. However, the most vital skills the forensic psychologist should have are solid clinical skills. To become a forensic psychologist, one should have graduate training in the field of psychology and they should also hold a doctorate degree in the field of psychology. It is also vital to have some education or training in the law or they could even have a Juris Doctor. Juris Doctor is the degree earned by attorneys. For a student to become a forensic psychologist, they should first earn a bachelor's degree in psychology or any other behavioral science. This will be followed by a masters or doctors’ degree. In the case of forensic psychologists, most of them will opt to do a doctorate degree in forensic psychology (Bartol & Bartol, 2017). Once the individual has completed these training, they will be required to earn their license and this differs between states. Each state has its licensure requirements but the basic ones are that the individual should have a minimum of a doctorate in psychology, supervised hours, and an exam.

Forensic psychologists work primarily in the office, crime scenes, and in the courtroom. They also collaborate with detectives, police…

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…the objectivity of the clinician will decrease and this will increase the likelihood of them making an erroneous opinion. This has led to the use of blinding techniques as a way of eliminating or reducing bias in legal judgment. The researchers established that the use of introspection, which has been shown many times by other researchers to be ineffective in decreasing bias was overwhelmingly endorsed by the respondents. Therefore, forensic psychologists should avoid using introspection and instead make use of behavioral evidence. The respondents indicated they were aware of the biases and most of them were able to determine the sham biases to be sham and not real biases (MacLean et al., 2019). However, there was no way of telling if the knowledge of the biases translates to reducing them when the forensic psychologist is performing his or her work. While this is good, it does not mean that they can effectively mitigate against them when they are performing their actual work. Therefore, it is vital that a study builds upon this current study and it examines forensic psychologists at work to determine how they apply the mitigation strategies they have mentioned. Future studies should look into examining the presence of biases and ways of mitigating against the effects of…