Law and Human Behavior最新文献

{"title":"Implicit bias training for police: Evaluating impacts on enforcement disparities.","authors":"Robert E Worden, Cynthia J Najdowski, Sarah J McLean, Kenan M Worden, Nicholas Corsaro, Hannah Cochran, Robin S Engel","doi":"10.1037/lhb0000568","DOIUrl":"10.1037/lhb0000568","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>The purpose of this study was to estimate the behavioral impacts of training police officers in implicit bias awareness and management.</p><p><strong>Hypotheses: </strong>Training police in implicit bias reduces racial and ethnic disparities in stops, arrests, summonses, frisks, searches, and/or use of force.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>A cluster randomized controlled trial using the stepped wedge design was applied to 14,471 officers in the New York City Police Department, with a 1-day training delivered to clusters of police commands between May 2018 and April 2019 and outcomes measured with police records of individual events from April 2018 to May 2019. Police records were supplemented with survey data on 1,973 officers matched to administrative data. For each type of enforcement action, the likelihood that the action involved or was taken against Black or Hispanic suspects, respectively, relative to White suspects was estimated, controlling for potential confounders. Additional analysis allowed for estimating training effects of different magnitudes for Black, Hispanic, and White officers and for officers with greater motivation to act without prejudice or greater concern about discrimination.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>None of the estimated training effects achieved statistical significance at the .05 level.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Isolated and weak evidence of behavioral impacts of the training was detected. Several explanations for the null findings are considered. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48230,"journal":{"name":"Law and Human Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"338-355"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141972110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Regional gender bias and year predict gender representation on civil trial teams.","authors":"Hannah J Phalen, Megan L Lawrence, Kristen L Gittings, Emily N Line, Sara N Thomas, Rose E Eerdmans, Taylor C Bettis, John C Campbell, Jessica M Salerno","doi":"10.1037/lhb0000585","DOIUrl":"10.1037/lhb0000585","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>There are documented gender disparities in the legal field. We examined whether gender representation on civil trial teams varied on the basis of (a) the degree of regional gender bias \"in the air\" and (b) time.</p><p><strong>Hypotheses: </strong>We hypothesized that women were underrepresented both on trial teams and in leadership roles within those teams. We predicted that these gender disparities were exacerbated in regions with stronger regional gender bias and that these gender disparities attenuated over time.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>We coded attorney gender and case outcomes in real civil trials (<i>N</i> = 655). We created regional implicit and explicit gender bias scores based on the year and region of the case using Project Implicit data. Finally, we used order-constrained inference and Bayesian modeling to identify the best-performing models.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Overall, women represented only 17% of attorneys at trial and 13% in leadership roles-indicating vast gender disparities. Gender disparities on teams and in leadership roles were more extreme in regions with high (vs. low) regional gender bias (teams: Bayes factor [BF] = 9,182; leadership: BF = 91,667) and improved over time (teams: BF = 6,420; leadership: BF = 3,495). Gender alone best predicted the likelihood of serving in a leadership role (BF = 1,197,397).</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Female attorneys were grossly underrepresented on civil trial teams. Gender representation on teams, but not leadership roles, has improved slightly over time. Culture may also contribute; women were less represented on trial teams in regions with greater gender bias in the air-particularly in leadership roles. Despite these slight improvements in representation on trial teams over time and in low-bias regions, gender disparities in leadership roles persist over time and levels of regional bias. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48230,"journal":{"name":"Law and Human Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"580-596"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142548359","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Miranda penalty: Inferring guilt from suspects' silence.","authors":"Megan L Lawrence, Emma R Saiter, Rose E Eerdmans, Laura Smalarz","doi":"10.1037/lhb0000587","DOIUrl":"10.1037/lhb0000587","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Despite the risks inherent to custodial police interrogation, criminal suspects may waive their <i>Miranda</i> rights and submit to police questioning in fear that exercising their rights or remaining silent will make them appear guilty. We tested whether such a <i>Miranda</i> penalty exists.</p><p><strong>Hypotheses: </strong>We predicted that people would perceive suspects who invoke their <i>Miranda</i> rights or sit in silence during an interrogation as more likely to be guilty than those who waive their <i>Miranda</i> rights.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>In two experiments, undergraduate psychology students (Experiment 1; <i>N</i> = 256) and students enrolled in law-enforcement-related degree programs (Experiment 2; <i>N</i> = 119) were instructed to play the role of a police officer investigating a series of crimes in which the suspect invoked his <i>Miranda</i> rights, sat in silence, or spoke to police. Participants evaluated each suspect along various characteristics (e.g., honest, suspicious), assessed his likely guilt, and reported how many hours they would allocate to investigating the suspect versus other potential suspects.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Suspects who invoked their right to silence or remained silent, compared with those who waived their rights and spoke to police, were perceived more negatively and judged as guiltier. Participants also allocated more hours toward investigating such suspects.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The protective power of <i>Miranda</i> is eroded by the tendency for people to infer guilt from a suspect's decision to invoke <i>Miranda</i> or remain silent during police interrogation. This <i>Miranda</i> penalty violates suspects' legal protection from being penalized for exercising their constitutional rights against self-incrimination and may bias the investigation and prosecution of criminal suspects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48230,"journal":{"name":"Law and Human Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"368-384"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142688908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Suppressing myside bias in civil litigation.","authors":"Mihael A Jeklic","doi":"10.1037/lhb0000584","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000584","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Myside bias-the tendency to evaluate and generate evidence as well as test hypotheses in a manner biased toward prior beliefs-causes disputants in litigation to harbor overconfident expectations of judicial awards and reduces odds of settlement. Two studies tested three interventions to suppress myside bias in civil litigation settings.</p><p><strong>Hypotheses: </strong>I predicted that the participants in the baseline conditions would exhibit myside bias in award estimates and argument ratings and that the interventions would attenuate it.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>Two between-subjects experimental studies using students of law (n = 164, Mage = 24.21 years, 53% female; n = 181, Mage = 20.89 years, 61% female) compared the participants' award estimates and argument ratings in a simulated civil dispute. The interventions (a) manipulated the advocates to think they represented the opposing side during initial information processing (side-switch condition), (b) required the participants to generate and evaluate arguments for both sides (dialectical condition), and (c) affected the participants' motivations by threatening dismissal in case of estimation error (goal states condition).</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Baseline groups in both studies displayed significant myside bias in award estimates (all ds ≥ 1.12) and argument ratings (all ds ≥ 1.29). In Study 1, the side-switch intervention eliminated bias in argument ratings (d = 0.73 and 0.72) but only reduced (d = 0.35) rather than eliminated bias in award estimates. In Study 2, the dialectical intervention reduced bias in argument ratings (d = 0.74 and 0.58) but did not eliminate it; it also failed to reduce bias in award estimates. The goal states intervention suppressed myside bias in both argument ratings (d = 0.76 and 0.82) and award estimates (d = 0.78).</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Myside bias in litigation settings is robust and difficult to suppress. Accountability interventions show potential as bias-attenuating strategies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48230,"journal":{"name":"Law and Human Behavior","volume":"48 5-6","pages":"564-579"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143568566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bias in the justice and legal systems: Cumulative disadvantage as a framework for understanding.","authors":"Lucy A Guarnera, Jennifer T Perillo, Kyle C Scherr","doi":"10.1037/lhb0000608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000608","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Bias is a pervasive aspect of human thought and behavior that influences how we perceive, interpret, and respond to the world around us. Although built on assumptions of fairness and equality, the justice and legal systems are not exempt from individual and structural biases, which contribute to differential outcomes and disproportionately affect individuals who are marginalized based on race, gender, socioeconomic status, education, and other factors. The special issue showcases innovative science and clinical perspectives on bias in the justice and legal systems, including its underlying mechanisms, consequences, and potential interventions. We offer a framework centered on cumulative disadvantage to conceptualize how biases can accrue and compound across different stages of the justice and legal systems. The articles examine issues involving multiple actors (e.g., police, suspects, attorneys, defendants, psychologists, probation officers, jurors, judges) engaged in various processes (e.g., stops, frisks, searches, interrogation, risk assessment, evidence review, decision-making) at different stages in the justice and legal systems (e.g., initial contact, investigation, forensic evaluation, trial, post-conviction). Much like research in other domains, the special issue articles reveal that bias in the justice and legal systems is prevalent, pernicious, and difficult to attenuate. Rigorous, transparent science and evidence-based practices targeting bias at early stages in the justice and legal systems before disadvantage accumulates are sorely needed and should inform future intervention efforts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48230,"journal":{"name":"Law and Human Behavior","volume":"48 5-6","pages":"329-337"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143568564","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Are forensic evaluators more likely to conclude that Black or White defendants are malingering?","authors":"Lucy A Guarnera, Daniel C Murrie, Brett O Gardner, Scott D Bender","doi":"10.1037/lhb0000589","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000589","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Malingering is a particularly stigmatizing forensic opinion that may be prone to racial bias, although scant research has investigated the possibility. We examined whether forensic evaluators are more likely to opine that Black defendants or White defendants are overstating mental health symptoms.</p><p><strong>Hypotheses: </strong>Study 1 (a field study) was exploratory. Following Study 1 findings, in Study 2 (an experiment), we hypothesized that participants would opine malingering more frequently for a Black defendant compared with a White defendant.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>In Study 1, we reviewed a large statewide sample of trial competence reports, of which 558 identified the defendant's race as Black or White. We coded feigning/malingering opinion and defendant race to assess associations. In Study 2, we randomly assigned forensic clinicians (N = 136; 78.7% identified as White only; 93.3% held a clinical doctoral degree; M = 10.7 years since earning highest degree) to read a mock competence report identifying the defendant's race as Black or White. Participants then provided opinions about malingering, competence, and other clinical judgments.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Study 1 demonstrated that one prolific real-world evaluator identified Black defendants as feigning/malingering five times more often than White defendants, although there was no racial disproportionality in the overall sample after accounting for this one evaluator's influence. In Study 2, defendant race was not significantly associated with malingering opinions or virtually any other clinical judgments. Hospital-based evaluators opined malingering more often than evaluators in private practice, and novice evaluators opined malingering more often than experienced evaluators.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Assessing racial bias among forensic clinicians is complex, particularly when the target is a stigmatizing but low-base-rate opinion such as malingering. Results underscore the impact of individual evaluator differences and suggest a need for evaluators themselves, and perhaps state agencies, to monitor forensic opinions to identify potential bias and remediate outlying practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48230,"journal":{"name":"Law and Human Behavior","volume":"48 5-6","pages":"545-563"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143568563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Disparate impact of risk assessment instruments: A systematic review.","authors":"Spencer G Lawson, Emma L Narkewicz, Gina M Vincent","doi":"10.1037/lhb0000582","DOIUrl":"10.1037/lhb0000582","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>One concern about the use of risk assessment instruments in legal decisions is the potential for disparate impact by race or ethnicity. This means that one racial or ethnic group will experience harsher legal outcomes than another because of higher or biased risk estimates. We conducted a systematic review of the literature to synthesize research examining the real-world impact of juvenile and adult risk instruments on racial/ethnic disparities in legal decision making.</p><p><strong>Hypotheses: </strong>Given the nature of research synthesis, we did not test formal hypotheses.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>Our systematic literature search as of July 2023 identified 21 articles that investigated the disparate impact of 13 risk assessment instruments on various legal outcomes. Most of these instruments were actuarial pretrial screening instruments.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Our narrative synthesis indicated that there is not strong evidence of risk instruments contributing to greater system disparity. Ten articles indicated that adopting risk instruments did not create (or exacerbate preexisting) disparities, and eight articles found that instrument use reduced disparities in legal decision making. Three articles reported evidence of disparate impact of risk instruments; only one of these studies received a strong study quality assessment score. We observed a scarcity of high-quality articles that employed what we deem to be the gold standard approach for examining the disparate impact of risk instruments (i.e., pretest-posttest design).</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The evidence signals that risk instruments can contribute to reductions in disparities across multiple stages of legal decision making. Yet study quality remains low, and most research has been conducted on decisions during the pretrial stage. More rigorous research on disparate impact across diverse legal decision points and approaches to risk assessment is needed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48230,"journal":{"name":"Law and Human Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"427-440"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142337147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Predictive bias in pretrial risk assessment: Application of the Public Safety Assessment in a Native American population.","authors":"Samantha A Zottola, Kamiya Stewart, Violette Cloud, Liz Hassett, Sarah L Desmarais","doi":"10.1037/lhb0000562","DOIUrl":"10.1037/lhb0000562","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Native Americans are vastly overrepresented in U.S. jails and people in rural communities face unique barriers (e.g., limited public transportation and services) that may impact how well pretrial risk assessments predict outcomes. Yet, these populations are understudied in the literature examining the predictive validity and, more importantly, the potential predictive bias of pretrial risk assessments. We sought to address these gaps.</p><p><strong>Hypotheses: </strong>We had three aims: (a) examine the validity of Public Safety Assessment (PSA) scores in predicting pretrial outcomes in a county with a high degree of rurality, (b) compare predictive validity and test for predictive bias among Native American and White people, and (c) compare predictive validity and test for predictive bias among men and women.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>Our sample comprised 4,570 closed cases involving people released on personal recognizance bonds over a 3.5-year period. About two thirds were Native American and men. The PSA was completed and outcome data were collected as part of routine pretrial practice.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>In slightly more than one third of cases, people failed to appear or were rearrested during the pretrial period. In the full sample, PSA scores demonstrated poor validity in predicting failure to appear but fair validity in predicting new arrest. Further analyses revealed predictive bias as a function of both race and sex in the prediction of failure to appear. In contrast, we did not find evidence of bias in the prediction of new criminal arrest, although predictive validity was slightly better for White people and men.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Our findings raise concerns regarding the use of PSA scores to inform pretrial decisions related to risk for failure to appear in rural communities and among Native American people. They also highlight concerns regarding reliance on static factors as well as the need for research on the validity of pretrial risk assessments in these populations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48230,"journal":{"name":"Law and Human Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"398-414"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141972111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Confirmatory information seeking is robust in psychologists' diagnostic reasoning.","authors":"Tess M S Neal, Nina MacLean, Robert D Morgan, Daniel C Murrie","doi":"10.1037/lhb0000574","DOIUrl":"10.1037/lhb0000574","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Across two experiments, we examined three cognitive biases (order effects, context effects, confirmatory bias) in licensed psychologists' diagnostic reasoning.</p><p><strong>Hypotheses: </strong>Our main prediction was that psychologist-participants would seek confirming versus disconfirming information after forming an initial diagnostic hypothesis, even given multiple opportunities to seek new information in the same case. We also expected that individual differences would affect diagnostic reasoning, such that psychologists with lower (vs. higher) cognitive reflection tendencies and larger (vs. smaller) bias blind spots would be more likely to demonstrate confirmatory bias.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>In Study 1, we recruited 149 licensed psychologists (<i>M</i> = 18 years of experience; 44% women; 71% White) and exposed them to one of four randomly assigned vignettes that varied order effects (one set of symptoms in reversed orders) and context effects (court referral vs. employer referral). They rank ordered a list of four possible initial diagnostic hypotheses and received a piped follow-up choice of which of two pieces of information (confirmatory or disconfirmatory) they wanted to test their initial hypothesis. Study 2 (<i>n</i> = 131; <i>M</i> = 21 years of experience; 53% men; 68% White) replicated and extended Study 1, following the same procedure except offering three sequential choice opportunities.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Both studies found robust confirmatory information seeking: 92% sought confirmatory information in Study 1, and confirmation persisted across three opportunities in Study 2 (90%, 84%, 77%), although it lowered with each opportunity (generalized logistic mixed regression model), <i>F</i>(2, 378) = 3.85, <i>p</i> = .02, η<i>_p</i>² = .02.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>These findings expand a growing body of research on bias in expert judgment. Specifically, psychologists may engage in robust confirmation bias in the process of forming diagnoses. Although further research is needed on bias and its impact on accuracy, psychologists may need to take steps to reduce confirmatory reasoning processes, such as documenting evidence for and against each decision element. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48230,"journal":{"name":"Law and Human Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"503-518"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142298880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Degrees of freedom as a breeding ground for biases-A threat to forensic practice.","authors":"Aileen Oeberst, Verena Oberlader","doi":"10.1037/lhb0000579","DOIUrl":"10.1037/lhb0000579","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Researcher-based degrees of freedom have been shown to contribute to low replication rates in science. That is, researchers' options within the process of designing and conducting empirical tests may increase the probability of false positive findings. The aim of this study was to transfer the concept of degrees of freedom to the practice of forensic-psychological assessment as it may likewise pose a severe threat to the reliability and validity of forensic assessments. Using an example from statement validity assessment, we identified degrees of freedom, calculated the different possible workflows that forensic experts can take, and elaborated on their consequences for the reliability and validity of their assessments. Importantly, we elaborated on why degrees of freedom likely not only increase noise in the results but also foster the occurrence of systematic biases in forensic practice.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Degrees of freedom in forensic-psychological assessments exist and lead to an enormous number of different possible workflows. As this threatens the interrater reliability and validity of forensic assessments and may lead to biases, we call for research on this issue and put forward recommendations for forensic practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48230,"journal":{"name":"Law and Human Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"519-530"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142298881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}