PSYC 3020 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Eyewitness Testimony, Forensic Psychology, Clinical Psychology
19 Mar 2013
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Document Summary
Forensic psychology: a field of psychology that deals with all aspects of human behaviour as it relates to the law or legal system. Although forensic psychologists often carry out the sorts of tasks you see in movies, the way in which they carry them out is very different from and less glamorous than the typical hollywood image. The way in which forensic psychology is portrayed by the media is usually inaccurate. There is no generally accepted definition of the field. Forensic psychology is often referred to as legal psychology or criminological psychology. Much of the debate about how forensic psych should be defined centres on whether the definition should be narrow or broad. A narrow definition would focus on certain aspects of the field while ignoring other, potentially important aspects (focusing on applied aspects while ignoring the experimental research focus only on the clinical or experimental aspects). This appears to be how many leading psychologists prefer to define the discipline.
