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Behavioral Sciences
Special Issues
Forensic and Legal Cognition
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Forensic and Legal Cognition

A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X). This special issue belongs to the section "Cognition".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 March 2026 | Viewed by 7828

Special Issue Editors

Dr. James Munro

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Psychology and Counselling, The Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK
Interests: social cognition; decision science; anxiety; memory; biases
Dr. Lee Curley

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Psychology, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow G4 0BA, UK
Interests: forensic cognition; legal psychology; decision science

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The understanding of cognition in forensic and legal contexts has enormous implications on the fairness of justice systems. Decision makers (such as forensic analysts, jurors and judges), eyewitnesses and other individuals involved in justice are vulnerable to many different types of psychological biases and errors that can result in miscarriages of justice. In research, different legal actors are often treated separately, despite these actors utilizing similar cognitive processes. For example, police officers, jurors, judges and forensic analysts are likely to use similar decision-making processes. In this Special Issue, we invite you to submit your original work to Behavioral Sciences for our upcoming Special Issue dedicated to Forensic and Legal Cognition. The goal of this Special Issue is to explore interactions between psychological processes and forensic and legal contexts, thereby covering the cognition of a wide range of legal and forensic actors in one issue.

We encourage a commensurately broad range of topics within this interdisciplinary fields. Examples of relevant areas include, but are not limited to, the following: eyewitness memory and testimony; cognitive bias in forensic analysis; juror and/or jury decision making; judge decision making; and cognitive factors in legal and forensic reasoning.

Abstract Deadline: December 22, 2024.
Notification of Abstract Acceptance: January 22, 2025.

Dr. James Munro
Dr. Lee Curley
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Behavioral Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • forensic bias
  • decision making
  • legal psychology
  • cognition
  • jurors and juries
  • verdict systems
  • biases

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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22 pages, 336 KB  
Article
Justice at Risk? The Influence of Recidivism Risk Information on Evaluation of Evidence and Determination of Guilt
by Tamara L. F. De Beuf, Roosmarijn M. S. van Es, Jan W. de Keijser and Henry Otgaar
Behav. Sci. 2025, 15(9), 1277; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15091277 - 18 Sep 2025
Viewed by 207
Abstract
In contrast to jurisdictions with bifurcated criminal justice proceedings, in Belgium and the Netherlands a defendant’s assessed risk of recidivism is known to triers of fact prior to making decisions about guilt. In three experiments conducted in those two countries, we investigated whether [...] Read more.
In contrast to jurisdictions with bifurcated criminal justice proceedings, in Belgium and the Netherlands a defendant’s assessed risk of recidivism is known to triers of fact prior to making decisions about guilt. In three experiments conducted in those two countries, we investigated whether information about recidivism risk would bias the fact finders’ evaluations of evidence and the defendant’s credibility, and their final decision on guilt. Specifically, student participants (Belgian sample: N = 368; Dutch sample: N = 236) and jury-eligible Belgian participants (N = 75) read a vignette about an aggravated assault with circumstantial evidence and a defendant who denied committing the alleged offense. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three vignettes: one without risk information, one describing a low risk of recidivism, and one describing a high risk of recidivism. We found no direct or indirect effect of risk on the proportion of guilty verdicts or on the evaluation of the evidence. We did find that participants who read that the defendant was low risk evaluated the innocence claim as being more credible, compared to those who were given high-risk information or no risk information. Moreover, higher credibility ratings were associated with a higher likelihood of a not-guilty verdict. While preliminary, these findings suggest recidivism risk information may influence fact finding, and merit replication, especially with judges. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forensic and Legal Cognition)
34 pages, 1319 KB  
Article
Case Order Effects in Legal Decision-Making
by Paul Troop and David Lagnado
Behav. Sci. 2025, 15(9), 1250; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15091250 - 14 Sep 2025
Viewed by 361
Abstract
Case order effects, where decision-makers resolve dilemmas differently depending on the order in which cases are presented, are well established in the psychology of moral decision-making. Yet this type of order effect has rarely been studied in a legal context. Given the integral [...] Read more.
Case order effects, where decision-makers resolve dilemmas differently depending on the order in which cases are presented, are well established in the psychology of moral decision-making. Yet this type of order effect has rarely been studied in a legal context. Given the integral importance of consistency and precedent to the law, we sought to test for the existence of case order effects in legal decisions. Participants across five studies (total n = 1023) were given pairs of life-or-death legal cases to decide, consisting of one decision generally viewed positively in isolation, and one decision negatively viewed, with the order of presentation being varied (positive before negative vs. negative before positive). Studies included civil and criminal cases and individual and group decision-making. Results demonstrated that the case order effects previously seen in the moral context also held in the legal context. Order effects were asymmetric, with responses to one case remaining stable while responses to the other being labile, depending on the order presented. A particularly novel finding was of responses to labile cases becoming less, rather than more, similar to responses to preceding cases. Order effects can be readily triggered in the context of legal decision-making, suggesting legal precedent may be partially dependent on the order in which cases are determined. The asymmetric and previously undiscovered direction of these order effects is not consistent with existing consistency-type theories which predict effects to be symmetrical and more similar to previous cases and the findings are only partially consistent with salience-type theories. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forensic and Legal Cognition)
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22 pages, 1605 KB  
Article
Biased and Biasing: The Hidden Bias Cascade and Bias Snowball Effects
by Itiel E. Dror
Behav. Sci. 2025, 15(4), 490; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15040490 - 8 Apr 2025
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 5672
Abstract
Cognitive bias is widespread, hidden, and difficult to deal with. It impacts each and every aspect of the justice and legal systems, from the initial engagement of police officers attending the crime scene, through the forensic examination, and all the way to the [...] Read more.
Cognitive bias is widespread, hidden, and difficult to deal with. It impacts each and every aspect of the justice and legal systems, from the initial engagement of police officers attending the crime scene, through the forensic examination, and all the way to the final outcome of the jurors’ verdict and the judges’ sentencing. It impacts not only the subjective elements in the justice and legal systems but also the more objective scientific elements, such as forensic fingerprinting and DNA. The impact of bias on each of these elements has mainly been researched and considered in silo, neglecting the biasing interactions and how bias cascades and snowballs throughout the justice and legal systems. These should happen rarely, as the Swiss cheese model shows that such errors in the final outcome rarely occur because they require that the shortcomings in each element be coordinated and aligned with the other elements. However, in the justice and legal systems, the different elements are not independent; they are coordinated and mutually support and bias each other, creating and enabling hidden bias cascade and bias snowball effects. Hence, minimizing bias requires not only taking measures to reduce bias in each of the elements but also a wider perspective that addresses bias cascade and bias snowball effects. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forensic and Legal Cognition)
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Review

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16 pages, 471 KB  
Review
On the Continuum of Foundational Validity: Lessons from Eyewitness Science for Latent Fingerprint Examination
by Adele Quigley-McBride and T. L. Blackall
Behav. Sci. 2025, 15(9), 1145; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15091145 - 22 Aug 2025
Viewed by 742
Abstract
Whether forensic disciplines have established foundational validity—sufficient empirical evidence that a method reliably produces a predictable level of performance—has become a question of growing interest among scientists and legal professionals. This paper evaluates the foundational validity of two sources of forensic evidence relied [...] Read more.
Whether forensic disciplines have established foundational validity—sufficient empirical evidence that a method reliably produces a predictable level of performance—has become a question of growing interest among scientists and legal professionals. This paper evaluates the foundational validity of two sources of forensic evidence relied upon in criminal cases: eyewitness identification decisions and latent fingerprint examiners’ conclusions. Importantly, establishing foundational validity and estimating accuracy are conceptually and functionally different. Though eyewitnesses can often be mistaken, identification procedures recommended by researchers are grounded in decades of programmatic research that justifies the use of methods that improve the reliability of eyewitness decisions. In contrast, latent print research suggests that expert examiners can be very accurate, but foundational validity in this field is limited by an overreliance on a handful of black-box studies, the dismissal of smaller-scale, yet high-quality, research, and a tendency to treat foundational validity as a fixed destination rather than a continuum. Critically, the lack of a standardized method means that any estimates of examiner performance are not tied to any specific approach to latent print examination. Despite promising early work, until the field adopts and tests well-defined procedures, foundational validity in latent print examination will remain a goal still to be achieved. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forensic and Legal Cognition)
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