Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.
Objective.Cognitive biases can impact experts’ judgments and decisions. We offer a broad descriptive model of how bias affects human judgment. Although studies have explored the role of cognitive biases and debiasing techniques in forensic mental health, we conducted the first systematic review to identify, evaluate, and summarize the findings. Hypotheses.Given the exploratory nature of this review, we did not test formal hypotheses. General research questions included the proportion of studies focusing on cognitive biases and/or debiasing, the research methods applied, the cognitive biases and debiasing strategies empirically studied in the forensic context, their effects on forensic mental health decisions, and effect sizes. Method.A systematic search of PsycINFO and Google Scholar resulted in 22 records comprising 23 studies in the United States, Canada, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. We extracted data on participants, context, methods, and results. Results.Most studies focused only on cognitive biases (k = 16, 69.6%), with fewer investigating ways to address them (k = 7, 30.4%). Of the 17 studies that tested for biases, 10 found significant effects (58.8%), four found partial effects (23.5%), and three found no effects (17.6%). Foci included general perceptions of biases; adversarial allegiance; bias blind spot; hindsight and confirmation biases; moral disengagement; primacy and recency effects; interview suggestibility; and cross-cultural, racial, and gender biases. Of the seven debiasing-related studies, nearly all (k = 6) focused at least in part on the general perception of debiasing strategies, with three testing for specific effects (i.e., cognitive bias training, consider-the-opposite, and introspection caution), two of which yielded significant effects. Conclusions.Considerable clinical and methodological heterogeneity limited quantitative comparability. Future research could build on the existing literature to develop or adapt effective debiasing strategies in collaboration with practitioners to improve the quality of forensic mental health decisions.
Law and Human Behavior – American Psychological Association
Published: Apr 21, 2022
Read and print from thousands of top scholarly journals.
Already have an account? Log in
Bookmark this article. You can see your Bookmarks on your DeepDyve Library.
To save an article, log in first, or sign up for a DeepDyve account if you don’t already have one.
Copy and paste the desired citation format or use the link below to download a file formatted for EndNote
Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
All DeepDyve websites use cookies to improve your online experience. They were placed on your computer when you launched this website. You can change your cookie settings through your browser.