LIVE: Reducing Bias and Error in Forensic Judgment

June 22, 2023
9:00 AM - 1:00 PM Pacific

4 Hours | 4 CEs

Tess Neal, PhD presents a live professional training program on Reducing Bias and Error in Forensic Judgment in partnership with the American Academy of Forensic Psychology (AAFP).

This program covers the basic science of how and why human judgments are susceptible to various kinds of bias, specifically emphasizing expert judgments in forensic settings. The program content focuses on bias and error reduction in forensic practice, supported by contemporary scholarship grounded in established research procedures.

These learnings should be applied in practice to improve expert forensic judgment and reduce bias and error. It would benefit society, justice, and the practitioners' reputation - those with good reputations and who do good work benefit in terms of job/promotion prospects, salary, and personal fulfillment. This program is uniquely valuable because it bridges cutting-edge science and practice to improve experts' judgments.

The program will also introduce a theoretical model clarifying when and why experts are protected against and when they are especially prone to bias. The implications of these findings for bias mitigation will be discussed as will be promising new directions for bias mitigation. The program will be interactive, including experiential exercises and activities to demonstrate the topics described.

This training will cover in detail empirical studies testing elements of the model, such as those bearing on the competing hypotheses of whether experts are vulnerable to bias vs. protected against bias by virtue of their expertise, how experts perceive themselves and their abilities, and the psychological mechanisms and real-world consequences of exaggerated confidence in objectivity. These studies are primarily done in the context of forensic judgment, forensic psychology, social work, and forensic science.

This program is intended for people in forensics in any work environment at all career stages, including forensic psychologists, clinical psychologists, practitioners in forensic mental health and forensic science, and more broadly, scientists interested in expert judgment.