The benefits of legal psychology: Possibilities, practice and dilemmas

Abstract

The law is in some ways an obvious area where psychology could be of benefit. Many of the problems the law and legal procedures deal with are essentially psychological in nature. Law, like psychology, is fundamentally concerned with how people think, feel and behave; with the causes and modification of behaviour; and with the processes of perception, memory and decision theory. At the same time, law is a particularly difficult area for psychologists to tackle, not only for scientific, but also for ethical and political reasons. The role and functions of legal institutions such as juries and courts are by no means straightforward and the prima facie relevance of psychology can be deceptive. Moreover, even when psychology clearly has a relevant contribution to make, attempts to exert real influence on legal decisions or policy can be frustrating. A certain amount of scepticism on the part of lawyers is healthy. But the influence of psychology in legal contexts frequently has less to do with the quality of the psychology than with professional, political and organizational considerations. Given the breadth of the field, this article is inevitably selective in the research and practice discussed. I shall not attempt to offer a comprehensive review of current work and its possible benefits. Rather, I aim to illustrate the range of topics, and the possibilities and difficulties in legal psychology using examples of recent research and attempts to influence legal decisions and legal policy. I first sketch briefly the growth of legal psychology.

The Law, The Musician, His Band and Their Partnership Agreement: Comprehensibility, Comprehension and Compliance in a Legal Text

“…Psycholinguistic research suggests that complex negative linguistic constructions are difficult for the human mind to process, because readers/listeners must first grasp the positive meaning of a sentence before they can work out its opposite (Lloyd-Bostock 1988). Multiple negatives in a sentence are considered particularly problematic in terms of comprehensibility and comprehension, because they function to cancel each other out -e.g.…”