Chapter 1 .

2
Psychology' s Premises,
Methods and Values
Brian R. Clifford
University of East London

On the surface it would seem as if law and psychology share common concerns
in that they are both trying to understand and predict human behaviour. In short,
-' both law and psychology take human nature as their subject matter. However,
beyond this commonality of focus, closer inspection would seem to reveal that
the two disciplines appear to diverge at the levels of value, basic premises,
their models, their approaches, their criteria of explanation and their methods.

Thus, while both psychology and substantive law, legal processes and
jurisprudence all address assumptions about the causes and modifications of
behaviour, about the process of perception, memory, recognition and decision
making, and about how people think and feel, in the past mutual facilitation
.•;,-. has been marked by its absence. Why is this?

Arguments have been made (e.g. Tapp, 1969) that while law is value-laden
and subjective, relying upon tradition and precedent, psychology is value-free
and objective, relying upon empirical research. Again, it has been asserted that
law is a practical art, a system of rules, a means of social control, concerned
. ^, with solving practical problems. Psychology, on the other hand, is a science,
concerned with the description, explanation, understanding, prediction and
control of human behaviour.

Haward (1979) talks of law as being an 'abattoir of sacred cows' for

psychology, in so far as all the beliefs that psychologists are thought to hold
dear are disputed by lawyers. Philosophically, the psychologist believes in
some degree of determinism (or causality), whereas the lawyer believes in free
will. Thus, while the psychologist tends to talk in terms of causes o/behaviour
the lawyer talks in terms of reasonsfor behaviour. The law conceives of people
as freely and consciously controlling their own behaviour, choosing their
actions and thus taking responsibility for them. As Bentley (1979) points out,

Handbook of Psycho/ogy in Legal Contexts

Edited by R. Bull and D. Carson. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
 14 INTRODUCTION: INTERDISCIPLINARY AND INTERPROFESSIONAL
consciousness and free will are axiomatic in legal theory. This does not sit well
with psychology, which has a different explanatory framework.
At the level of theory construction and everyday practical activity, as Meehl
• ' . :' (1977) points out, lawyers rely on common-sense generalisations about human
behaviours, based upon speculation, introspection, intuition, reflection,
culturally transmitted beliefs and personal anecdotal observation. Psychology,
on the other hand, favours empirical research and, where feasible and ethically
"•* • -' practicable, experimental (or at least systematic) testing. Thus, the proper place
of common sense in the 'scheme of things' is a major battle ground: if
• , • ' - psychology agrees with common sense, lawyers feel that nothing has been
gained by their interaction with psychologists; if psychology disagrees, or
produces counter-intuitive findings, lawyers prefer to run with common sense
and intuition, perhaps because they believe that psychology's counter-factual
assertions or propositions, masquerading as truth, may be nothing more than
controversial or speculative theory, poorly corroborated by available evidence.
Like all caricatures, there is more than a grain of truth in this polarised
stereotyping of law and psychology. But they are stereotypes none the less,
and their truth values are called into question by the fact that in this century
. psychology has provided us with models, concepts and findings which have
radically changed the way we think about people, frequently with implications
for law, since law, legal procedures and discussions of law and jurisprudence
,, . all involve assumptions about the nature of human beings, their capacities and
their behaviour. Psychological theory and research have influenced, inter alia,
, laws concerning discrimination, capital punishment, pornography, sexual
behaviour, child abuse and the conditions under which individuals may not be
held responsible for their actions (e.g. Tapp and Levine, 1977).
In other words, a case can certainly be mounted that scientific psychology has
added to, clarified and, I would like to argue, possibly improved upon the
common sense or naive psychology on which law has proceeded in the past.
If this positive fertilisation is to continue and accelerate into mutually
beneficial reciprocity, a clear understanding by lawyers of what psychology
is, and is not, is required. It is the purpose of this chapter to begin this process
• by outlining the premises, methods and values of psychology.
PSYCHOLOGY'S PREMISES
Psychology claims to be both a theoretical science and at the same time an
applied discipline, able to serve in the practical affairs of the world (Clifford,
1981). It makes this claim because, as a discipline, it sees itself as objective,
empirical, eclectic and humane. Underpinning this self-perception is the
acceptance of a number of premises.
PSYCHOLOGY'S PREMISES, METHODS AND VALUES 15
Premise 1: Acceptance of the Scientific Method
» Psychology accepts that science is but one approach to the discovery and
ordering of knowledge. It is taken to be different from common sense,
metaphysics, religion, magic, tradition, rationalism and phenomenology, not
because of its subject matter, but because of its methodology. Psychology is
unified and distinct because of its method or logic of discovery. Specific
techniques vary between and within different sub-disciplines of psychology,
but the basic method remains the same—careful, controlled observation,
rational and constrained reasoning and the subjecting of theories to empirical
test. Description is the empirical goal of psychology and explanation is the
theoretical goal.
Premise 2: Acceptance of the Basic Assumptions of the
Scientific Enterprise
The psychological approach is guided by assumptions that are unproven and
unprovable. They are necessary prerequisites for the conduct of scientific
discourse—they constitute the axiomatic substructure of psychology.
Nature is orderly and regular. Events do not occur haphazardly. Change itself
displays patterns that can be understood. This belief applies to all people,
conditions and phenomena.
We can know nature. This is an important axiom for psychology because it
assumes that humans are just as much a part of nature as are other natural
objects, and although they possess unique and distinctive characteristics they
can yet be understood and explained by the same methods as all science.
Individuals and groups exhibit sufficiently recurring, orderly and empirically
demonstrable patterns as to be amenable to scientific study.
Nothing is self-evident. Claims for truth must be demonstrated objectively.
Tradition, subjective belief and common sense are not sufficient for
verification. Herein lies the sceptical and critical attitude of psychology.
Knowledge is acquired from the acquisition of experience. This emphasis on
empirical knowledge is a counter to the belief that knowledge is innate in
humans and that pure reason is sufficient to produce verifiable knowledge.
Premise 3: Acceptance of the Rules of Scientific Enquiry
The pre-theoretical axioms listed above break through to the surface when we
examine the rules of science. These are many but the chief ones are as follows.
Use operational definitions. Operationism means that terms must be defined
by the steps or operations used to measure them.
16 INTRODUCTION: INTERDISCIPLINARY AND INTERPROFESSIONAL
Generality. This means that discussion or statements need to be about abstract
variables, not particular antecedent and consequent conditions. Thus,
descriptions are stated in terms of variables, not the specific stimuli that
exhibited these variables; for example, 'punishment', not a smack on the hand
or a smack on the bottom.
Controlled observation. This allows tentative identification of why something
happened, what caused it, under what conditions. The stress on this method is
predicated upon the concept of causality. The argument is that, assuming
causality, the surest way to uncover such causality is to hold constant all
variables not under test while varying the variable that is under investigation
(the independent variable), because variables that do not vary cannot explain
changes in behaviour. Controlling variables is not the only way to discount a
variable as the cause of change, but it is the most direct and certain. To lack
control in this sense is to court the dreaded confound: where two variables vary
together, making interpretation of their separate effects impossible.
Replication. To be replicable data must be reliable. If data are not reliable, then
explanations are not either. Scientific statements are meant to apply to whole
classes or populations of people, conditions or phenomena. Before
generalisation can be accepted it must be shown to hold for an adequate sample
drawn from the population of interest. Unless proper and sufficient replications
are made, generalisations ought not to be made.
Parsimony. Psychologists should never produce a complicated or more
abstract explanation unless all other, simpler, explanations have been
experimentally ruled out.
Consistency. If two explanatory statements are contradictory then at least one
of them must be false. The principle of consistency requires that an explanatory
statement must not contradict any explanatory statement that has been
: confirmed.
Confirmation. Explanatory statements must admit of predictive statements and
-.,'.,!- these statements must be verifiable/falsifiable.
Premise 4: Acceptance of the Generic Research Process
So far we have outlined the unwritten assumptions of the psychological method
and we have detailed the discipline's operating ground rules for membership
of the scientific club. Let us now see how psychologists actually progress,
irrespective of their particular sub-discipline, at a fairly abstract level.
Scientific knowledge is knowledge provable by both reason and experience.
That is, science operates in two distinct but interrelated worlds—the
conceptual/theoretical and the observational/empirical. Logical validation and
PSYCHOLOGY'S PREMISES, METHODS AND VALUES 17
Problem
Generalisation Hypothesis
Data analysis Research design
Measuring
instruments
Figure 1.2.1
empirical verification are the criteria employed by science to evaluate claims
to knowledge. So with psychology. Logic is concerned with valid reasoning
but not empirical truth. Thus, while validity has to do with internal consistency,
experience or empiricism has to do with approximations to truth. Both these
ways of reasoning, and both aims or goals, are enshrined in the research
process.
This research process has seven basic stages, as can be seen in Figure 1.2.1.
Problemformulation. The observation of a problem to be understood can come
from anywhere or anyone. Problem formulation involves thinking about a
problem and tentatively generating some possible explanations. These possible
explanations are then converted into possible tests of their correctness. This is
usually done in the form of hypotheses.
Hypotheses. Hypotheses represent refinements of ideas into testable
propositions that can be, at least in principle, confirmed or falsified.
Research designs. The nature of the hypotheses generated and the embedding
theory and experimentation that are known to be relevant to it will suggest how
best to go about testing predictions. Different research methods and
experimental designs each have their good and bad points. The selection of the
appropriate design is as much an art as it is a science.
Measuring instruments. This is partly a function of operationalisation referred
to above but, again, different questions will require different solutions in terms
of which measures will be decided upon.
18 INTRODUCTION: INTERDISCIPLINARY AND INTERPROFESSIONAL
Data collection. Once again, decisions have to be made concerning the timing,
duration, amount and nature of data to be collected. A basic issue, because of
the reliance of experimental psychology on statistical analysis, is that the data
should be quantifiable in some way, either initially or at least eventually. This
is one of the areas where the psychologist and the psychiatrist can most clearly
be differentiated. Unlike the psychologist, the psychiatrist is concerned to
listen to the utterances of a person and then engage in interpretation of these
utterances. However, when psychiatrists employ tests to aid their interpretation
they are coming closer to the psychologist, because these tests will have
involved standardisation on large numbers of people initially.
Data analyses. A huge number of statistical tests are potentially available to
the psychologist, and a lawyer coming to psychology is likely to be mystified
by this range. This is not a real issue, however, because the choice of
appropriate statistical test is dictated by such things as the number of groups
in the study, whether the conditions are related in some way or not, and the
level of measurement of the dependent variable (see below). The number of
types of different measurement one takes of any person in an experiment is
also a deciding factor in what statistical tests should be used.
Generalisation. As was said above all psychologists wish to generalise their
particular findings beyond the actual study conducted. Whether they can
legitimately do so depends on a number of issues. Statistical analysis allows
generalisation to other samples of the population from which the experimental
sample was drawn, and the population of that sample per se. To the extent that
the study reproduced the conditions of the situation to which the person wishes
to generalise tentative generalisation is defensible. In general, the issue of
extrapolation from known situations to unknown situations is a question of
internal and external validity (see below).
Premise 5: Acceptance of the Aims of Science
The aims of science in general and psychology in particular are many and
varied and shift at different stages in the maturity of the various sub-disciplines,
and within a research programme' s life cycle. However, with few exceptions,
' all psychologists would accept that they are concerned with describing,
explaining, understanding, predicting and controlling particular processes and
general behaviour repertoires.
These, then, are the premises upon which psychology operates. It believes that
the scientific method is the most powerful calculus yet devised to produce
verifiable and falsifiable knowledge. It has unwritten assumptions, unspoken
rules of evidence and evaluation, and clearly marked stages of data gathering,
theory construction and knowledge generation. It also has areas of uncertainty
and controversy. The scientific method is believed by psychologists to be the
royal road, but it is not without its pot holes—but these pot holes are
PSYCHOLOGY'S PREMISES, METHODS AND VALUES 19
troublesome, not terminal. Having looked at the premises, we can now move
on to look at the methods that psychology employs.
METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY
At the level of method all psychologists, of whatever persuasion, believe that
observed behaviours and changes in behaviour are caused by something,
whether they be external factors or internal factors such as limited processing
capacity, attitudes, beliefs or values, or mere habit and conditioning. The
application of research methods by psychology is concerned to establish just
what causes what.
The True Experiment
The true experiment, defined as the random allocation of subjects (i.e. people)
to experimental conditions and the manipulation of one or more independent
variables, is believed to be the best way to disentangle cause and effect
relationships. By randomly allocating people to experimental conditions any
individual difference factors, due to the individuality of these different people,
. are spread throughout the experimental design and thus, while these human
differences may dilute any real effects that are present, they will not distort the
true effects. By varying only one or a few variables while holding all other
conditions constant this allows fairly unambiguous delineation of cause and
effect relationships.
The key feature of the experimental method involves careful manipulation or
.; • .'•'. change of some aspect of a situation and observing the effects this change has
;;••• on some behaviour or thought process of interest, in order to establish
' relationships. The event, condition or situation that is manipulated is called the
independent variable (a variable being something that can assume different
values—e.g. noise: high, medium or low), so called because it is under the
;. .; •<: \ .' control of the experimenter and independent of the people taking part in the
experiment. The physical, psychological or social changes which are measured
are called the dependent variable (because the changes depend on the values
of the manipulated variable—e.g. increased, decreased or unchanged
reasoning performance). Changes in the dependent variable are usually
•• recorded as, or translated into, numbers to allow statistical procedures to be
applied to them.
The basic experimental design involves two groups of people (subjects): the
experimental group, which has the independent variable applied to or withheld
from it, and the control group, which does not experience any experimental
manipulation at all. This basic design can be, and usually is, greatly increased
in complexity.
20 INTRODUCTION: INTERDISCIPLINARY AND INTERPROFESSIONAL
Usually an experiment involves taking measurements from each individual
under each of the conditions of manipulation or treatment that they appear in.
All these scores are then converted to a mean score (average) for the particular
condition or group and then interpreted for correlation, difference or trend.
Basic to this task is statistics: the discipline that deals with sampling data from
a (theoretical) population of individuals and then drawing inferences about the
population from the sample. Statistical tests are applied to the means of the
different manipulated groups, and if numerical differences translate into
statistically significant differences then this declares that the observed
differences between the different groups are trustworthy and not due to chance
factors. As such, they should generalise to other samples of the same
population and the population as a whole.
There are a number of intrinsic but not insuperable problems in the true
experiment as far as the law is concerned. First, in experimental analyses it is
the means of the groups that are compared and, because of individual
differences, it is possible that any one person in a particular group will be better
or worse than the mean score would suggest. That is, group means may not
represent the performance of any one individual in that group. This has the
implication that, for example, a mean difference between adult and child
witness groups, in favour of adults, may mask the fact that some children
actually outperformed some adults.
A second problem is that significance is evaluated in terms of presence or
absence, not size. But 'significance' does not equal 'importance'; it simply
indicates that it is unlikely that the effect came about by chance. Most psycho-
logical research has not been analysed by the power statistics recommended
by Cohen (1977; Cohen and Cohen, 1975) despite these being readily available
and computationally simple. Thus we need to know not only that an effect is
present, but whether it is large enough to matter for practical purposes.
Yet another issue raised concerning the experimental method is its artificiality.
Rabbitt (1981) calls it a tenuous abstraction of real-life situations. This raises
questions of internal and external validity. Internal validity refers to the degree
to which we can be sure that variation in the dependent variable is due to
manipulation of the independent variable. External validity refers to the extent
to which the results of an experiment can be generalised to other situations,
other subjects and other tasks. The problem is that, in general, as you increase
one type of validity so you reduce the validity of the other. External validity
is often talked about in terms of ecological validity, but the two are somewhat
different. External validity refers to subject representativeness (can we
extrapolate from rats to humans?), variable representativeness (do findings
with 'white noise', which is known to cause arousal, generalise to the arousal
present in rape situations?), and the setting representativeness of the study (do
findings obtained from people watching a rape scene on a video recorder
correspond to findings obtained from victims or witnesses actually involved
PSYCHOLOGY'S PREMISES, METHODS AND VALUES 21
in a real rape crime?). Only this last area of representativeness is concerned
with ecological validity. However, when we consider problems of ecological
validity we need to distinguish between realism and generalisability
(Berkowitz and Donnerstein, 1982). Realism refers to whether the
experimental setting bears a resemblance to the real world. A key question is
the importance of the mundane realism (Clifford, 1978). If we can be sure that
the psychological processes are the same in the contrived situation as in the
real world, then the degree of realism is not a real threat to external validity.
The ability of an experiment's results to generalise to other situations is more
important than their superficial resemblance to the real world. Additionally,
surface realism does not guarantee an increase in generalisability (Banaji and
Crowder, 1989; Crowder, 1993). Thus it is generalisability rather than surface
realism that determines whether a study is ecologically valid (Elmes,
Kantowitz and Roediger HI, 1992).
Despite all these objections the experimental method is still the linchpin of the
psychological endeavour. This is so because, despite its acknowledged
weaknesses, the true experiment is still the best method of ascertaining
knowledge in situations where it is practical and ethical to conduct such a study.
All the other research methods available, and used by the psychologist, have
their own problems which, on balance, are more problematic than the
experimental method.
However, in certain situations the true experiment is not available as an option
and other methods must be adopted, as described below.
Case Studies
Case study research can be of two types: archival case histories or case studies
proper. In the first, a researcher surveys the case records of many people, trying
to discern trends or patterns. Such study can provide important descriptive
information but not much else. The second type of case study involves
longitudinal studies of single subjects over time with many observations being
• made. There are several problems with this type of research: there is no
adequate baseline against which to compare change; because they are
idiographic (based upon one person), generalisation is problematic; because
variables are hopelessly confounded, causality cannot be unambiguously
ascribed. Thus, the most we can have are interesting hypotheses.
Naturalistic Observation Studies
These are frequently referred to as field studies. Here humans are observed in
their natural habitats. The major problems are what and how to observe. Choice
of observational units may entail theory that has not been made explicit. How
to measure will involve sampling of behaviours, and decisions over whether
' to measure frequency, rate, magnitude, duration or latency (i.e. period before
 22
INTRODUCTION: INTERDISCIPLINARY AND INTERPROFESSIONAL
onset) of behaviour will also have to be made. The biggest drawback to this
form of research is that you are at the mercy of events. If the event of interest
does happen then other things may be happening at the same time, either seen
or not seen by the researcher. If this is the case, then again we have major
problems of ascribing causality. To the extent that these methods cannot ascribe
causality, then this type of research is merely illustrative, descriptive,
interesting or suggestive.
Correlational Studies
These types of study look for relationships between two or more factors or
variables, at least one of which is not controlled by the researcher. The
correlational approach has been a valuable tool in the history of psychology,
especially in the fields of personality, social and intellectual development. It
is mainly used when manipulation is impossible or impractical. Multiple
regression or factor analysis, in which many variables are inter-correlated,
have frequently been employed with this type of method to determine the
presence or importance of relevant clusters of common factors or correlations.
The problem with correlational studies is that correlation does not mean
causation. All that a correlation study can show is one of two things: if there
is no correlation then there can be no causal relationship between or among
the variables being investigated; if, however, there is a statistically significant
correlation between or among variables, causation cannot be deduced. This is
because of the possibility of a mediating, but undetected, truly causal variable
being present. Thus, a significant correlation can only be suggestive of
causality, never definitively so.
Quasi Experimental Designs
Here we can directly manipulate the independent variable but we cannot
randomly allocate subjects to experimental conditions. Because such designs
are always dealing with intact groups (i.e. pre-existing different groups of
people) within specific experimental conditions, causality is always
problematical because other factors could be acting as confounds between
these intact groups, falsely'suggesting'that the independent variable is having
an effect.
Questionnaire Research
This is a popular methodology of social psychologists. It can produce a huge
amount of data on a wide range of issues in a short space of time. However, it
has several difficulties and disadvantages. The questions asked have to be very
carefully composed, the responses have to be considered in terms of the level
of measurement that they will yield, and not everyone returns their
questionnaire. This immediately causes problems of sampling and the possible
PSYCHOLOGY'S PREMISES, METHODS AND VALUES 23
distorted results that may eventuate from a self-selected sample. There is no
check possible that the respondent filled out the questionnaire in the way it
was hoped they would—or even that they, rather than someone else, filled it
out. As such, this methodology is suggestive but never definitive.
Qualitative Research
This approach is used by social psychologists and by developmental!sts who
explain behaviour by underlying changes in structures and mechanisms that
are related to age. The data sought are qualitative rather than quantitative, and
are concerned with the feelings, concepts and imagery that people have about
the issue under investigation. This type of research is being strengthened by
the development of discourse analysis, and other quasi-quantifiable techniques
such as Q sort, which gets people to sort a large number of statements into a
rank order and then proceeds to interpret the groupings or cluster of
respondents giving similar rank orderings. Thus, Q sort scales people, not
items, and this analysis is aided by computerised statistical programs.
Statistical Methods
All the above research methodologies try to exercise some sort of experimental
control over the responses of interest. It is, however, also possible to exercise
statistical control. The major statistical technique is multiple regression. This
technique is employed by those who accept that all behaviour is multi-
determined and complex. Multiple regression assumes independent variables
are correlated but that it is possible to separate out the individual and joint
'" ' * contribution of any factor to any dependent variable of interest. Thus, the
contribution of age, sex, birth position, economic status, amount of television
watched, previous offending, racial type, and so on, could all be looked at
together in multiple regression analysis and the individual and collective
contribution of each of these variables to, for example, delinquent behaviour
could be assessed. There are other equally powerful statistical techniques that
psychologists are increasingly employing as an alternative to tight
experimental control over variables, especially where such control is difficult
or unethical.
These then are the many and varied techniques that psychologists have at their
disposal. The technique chosen will always be that which gives greatest control
over variance (variability within subjects and between experimental
conditions) and sources of error. Thus the methodology eventually chosen for
use will be that which maximises induced variance, minimises error variance
and controls extraneous variance, as far as the situation allows.
Having said this, however, a sensible approach that should be adopted by any
psychologist who knows that his or her findings are going to be applied, or
may be applied at some future date, is to validate initial findings by convergent
24 INTRODUCTION: INTERDISCIPLINARY AND INTERPROFESSIONAL
operations. That is, attempt to obtain the same findings despite using several
different methodologies, tasks and experimental populations. In addition,
while it is true that the research method is a question of logic and not of
location, ecological validity dictates that different situations of mundane
realism be sampled also. Replication is the backbone of science and unless and
until replications, replications with refinements, and conceptual replications
have been undertaken no psychologists worth their salt would allow their
results to go forward as solid and thus pertinent to practical issues.
VALUES IN PSYCHOLOGY
I began by arguing that psychologists comprise a wide range of specialisms.
It was not always so. As psychology evolved from the 1890s onwards and
established itself as an empirical science being based on systematic
observation rather than reason alone, it developed and separated into a small
number of loosely coherent schools best characterised by busy confusions with
occasional transient clear directions. Such schools declined after the 1940s and
this way of looking at psychology is no longer profitable. Their influence lives
on but the organisation of psychology is now along different lines, and may
best be conceived of in terms of perspectives, fields of interest or domains of
operations or specialisms. That is, different groups believe that their particular
approach offers the best value in understanding human beings.
It is with different perspectives, fields of interest or specialisms, rather than
adherents to grand schools of psychology that lawyers will most likely interact.
It is important to appreciate, however, that these different perspectives are not
mutually exclusive and may represent merely a different focus on different
aspects of the same complex phenomenon.
Many psychologists classify themselves as biological psychologists, psycho-
physiologists, psychobiologists orneuropsychologists. Their basic assumption
is that all psychological events correspond to some activity in the brain. The
main concern is to explain psychological phenomena by means of brain sites
or tissues, neurotransmitters, or hormonal activity stimulated by brain activity.
Thus they will be interested, for example, in how hormones influence mood
and behaviour, what areas of the brain control speech or reasoning and how
brain damage or injury can cause the loss of these faculties, or how drugs can
influence rational behaviour. Their major methods will be experimental, allied
to invasive and increasingly non-invasive brain techniques.
Behavioural psychologists will not invoke neurophysiological structures in the
brain to account for behaviour; nor will they seek to recruit mentalistic
!f
concepts. They will be concerned to explain functional relations between
stimulus and response by making recourse to rewards and punishment, and
their scheduling (their consistent or inconsistent application). Their major
PSYCHOLOGY'S PREMISES, METHODS AND VALUES 25
methods will be experimental and learning paradigms. Behavioural
psychologists could be relevant to legal concerns by explaining the causes of
crime and the roots of particular behaviours, to the concept of mens rea and to
issues of punishment and rehabilitation programmes.
Cognitive psychologists are concerned with the higher mental processes of
perception, memory, thinking and decision making. Thus, they will explain
overt behaviour by recourse to cognitive mechanisms and processes. A key
explanatory framework will involve information processing whereby
incoming information is processed in a variety of ways—it is selected,
transformed, translated, compared and contrasted with information and
every-day world knowledge already in memory. Their methods will be almost
exclusively experimental. These psychologists have already had a great deal
of contact with the criminal justice system in the fields of witnessing,
confessions and jury decision making.
A psychoanalytic ally orientated psychologist will have imbibed the views of
the psychoanalytic school of Freud and his followers and will argue that much
of our behaviour stems from unconscious processes. Unconscious motives
rather than rational reasons are sought for all behaviours under this perspective.
Their methods will involve case histories and talking-through. This involves
allowing patients/clients to talk freely about their lives in order to facilitate the
bringing to the surface of deep-seated blocks, and bound and free-floating
anxieties. The analysis of dreams could also play a part in uncovering hidden
motives for behaviour. These psychologists will be concerned with
dangerousness, aggressive behaviour, the way trauma can have deep and
lasting effects, and all cases involving mental or behavioural abnormality. All
these behaviours, however, can also be explained outwith the psychoanalytic
domain. Psychoanalytic psychologists are found within the developmental,
clinical and educational specialisms to be discussed below.
Developmentalists concern themselves mainly with the evolutionary 'staged'
aspects of development from birth to old age. They will be interested in such
things as separation, attachment and bonding issues, and cognitive abilities
that impact on, for example, competency to testify. All these issues are central
concerns of the law in so far as it relates to children. Their methods will be
eclectic and involve observation, survey, experimental and case history.
Personality psychologists are concerned with the uniqueness of persons,
whether as a member of an identifiable type or group or as an individual. They
continuously debate whether the nomothetic approach—which tries to
establish the major dimensions of personality on which people may differ but
which are present to some degree in everyone—or the ideographic
approach—which seeks to establish the uniqueness of an individual's
personality—is the better way fully to understand personality. That is, whether
we should treat everyone as unique, thus ruling out the possibility of predicting
26 INTRODUCTION: INTERDISCIPLINARY AND INTERPROFESSIONAL
their behaviour, but gaining a richer insight into their unique traits, or view
each person as a constellation of known traits and thus somewhat predictable
in known situations. Their methods will involve personality questionnaires,
repertory grids, observation and correlational studies.
Clinical and counselling psychologists share the same focus but are differently
trained. Clinical psychologists are not medically trained (as psychiatrists are),
but they do deal with abnormal and psychiatric behaviour of all types.
Counselling psychologists, while often concerned with abnormal behaviour,
tend to be concerned with less severe forms of abnormality. However, because
both are engaged in the application of psychological principles at the point of
breakdown, and with the diagnosis and treatment of emotional and behavioural
problems, they will be concerned with mental illness, drug addiction, marital
and family conflicts and, especially counselling psychologists, less serious
adjustment problems. As mentioned above, clinical psychologists may have a
.psychoanalytic orientation but, especially in the UK, the behaviouristic,
cognitive and personality approach is also widely present.
Educational psychologists usually deal with individual children who have
emotional or learning problems and thus could have an important role to play
in several areas of the law as it relates to children. Their methods will involve
psychometric testing, observation and case histories.
From the above it is likely that when a lawyer comes to the discipline of
psychology he or she may be excused for exclaiming 'what discipline?'. So
what is it that binds these disparate activities together? What principle brings
about coherence? The answer is that, whatever the nature of activity being
investigated, there is always a level of analysis beyond the 'what' level. This
deeper level asks the question 'how' and 'why'. These questions are the focus
of all professionals who called themselves psychologists, and it is the nature
of the answers to these questions which cause the 'bewildering confederacy'
of psychology to cohere, despite their very different methods of enquiry
concerning the addressing of these questions.
This broad-stroke insight into what psychology is and is not should help you
appreciate and understand what is to follow in subsequent chapters of this
volume. The assumptions and working methods of a wide variety of
psychologists have been outlined and the core relevance of psychology to law
as a discipline, and as a body of professionals, has at least been hinted at.
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