1.  At the scene of the crime:  An archival study of eyewitness memory

This project has several goals, one of which is to examine the role that eyewitnesses play in the disposition of criminal cases by the San Diego District Attorney's Office.  In its third year of investigation, this study is examining cases that were reviewed by the DA for prosecution.  Cases that were accepted and rejected for prosecution are being coded.  Factors that are being examined include characteristics of the eyewitness, witnessing conditions and the eyewitness identification outcome.  This project hopes to answer questions such as:
 

• How often are defendants convicted based on eyewitness evidence alone?

• How reliable is eyewitness evidence really?

• What are the real world parameters of factors (e.g., duration exposure, lighting, weapon focus, source misattributions) studied in the laboratory and how do they affect eyewitness accuracy?

• Does the quality of eyewitness testimony impact case issuing decisions?

2.  Unusual Suspects:  An analysis of real world lineups

Click here for my dissertation proposal.

We are using real line-ups constructed by the police to assess how often pop-outs (i.e., line-ups for which one member stands out because s/he physically looks different from the other line-up members) occur in the real world--ie, in the criminal justice system.  Research conducted in the laboratory finds that pop-out line-ups are more likely to generate false positives (ie, the selection of a foil or a person who is not the criminal suspect).  The question is:  How often do pop-outs occur in the legal system?

3.  Sexual History and Rape Reporting

Does a woman's past sexual behavior influence her choice to report forced or consensual intercourse as rape?  Yes.  Our research finds that women who are "sexually experienced" are less likely to label and report an episode of unwanted intercourse as rape to the legal system; and they are less likely to make false accusations compared to less experienced women.

Why do we care about sexual experience anyway?  Rape shield laws exclude a woman's past sexual behavior from testimony heard in trial.  In the past, such testimony was often used to impeach the complainant's testimony, the idea being that a sexually experienced woman was likely to have consented to intercourse and that she was in turn likely to make a false rape accusation.  Although rape shield laws exist, it is still possible to admit sexual behavior in trial, the judge allowing.

4.  The Misinformation Effect

Click here to read a meta-analysis of misinformation effect studies that I just finished.

What effect does discussing a crime that you saw with others have on subsequent memory for the event?  Even though the police advise witnesses to a crime to not speak to one another during the course of a criminal investigation, it is highly likely that such discussions occur anyway.  Why?  Well witnesses to a crime often know one another.  Since preventing these interactions is impossible, it is important to understand the conditions under which discussion facilitates or impairs memory.

Most psychological research on this topic argues that discussion poses the danger that misleading/inaccurate information will be introduced and thereby distort a person's original memory for the event.  The impact that misleading information has on memory has been termed the misinformation effect .  If misleading post event information negatively impacts memory, one possible outcome is that some eyewitnesses might lead police to the wrong suspect or give information about the suspect's behavior that is incorrect.  However, there is another area of research that finds that in some instances, group discussion enhances memory!  (Incidentally, these two research areas don't really talk to one another.)

The purpose of the research that we are doing is to find out whether the strength of memory for the original to-be-remembered event plays a role in whether a person's memory can be distorted.  We are also trying to look at the misinformation effect during the course of "quasi-natural" discussions to find out how often errors of omission and commission occur as a consequence of talking with others.

5.  Do women have psychological counter adaptations to rape?

Recent research suggests that women might behave differently depending on where they are in the course of their menstrual cycle.  Retrospective research finds that women are less likely to be raped when they are ovulating.  The sociobiological interpretation of these findings is that women are using rape avoidant strategies that they acquired through the course of evolution.  In this view, rape is an adaptation used by some men in order to increase their inclusive fitness.  If you are a guy, you have three strategies to gain access to a sexual partner and thereby increase your reproductive success:  You can either honestly court a mate, trick one into mating with you, or you can force someone to mate with you, ie, rape .

The thorny issue is whether rape truly is an adaptive strategy (in the evolutionary sense) in humans.  One bit of evidence favoring such a theory would be finding that women have counter adaptations to rape.  One proposed counter adaptation is that women are less likely to engage in risky behavior while ovulating.  Rape robs a woman of the ability to choose a mate to her liking.  A huge cost in evolutionary terms for women is an unintended pregnancy resulting from rape, and therefore, women might have evolved strategies to avoid such a possibility.  Research is currently being done to test this idea.