Psychology is to law as biology is to medicine - it explains and predicts human behavior in legal situations. It tells us why witnesses identify innocent people as criminals, why witnesses falsely remember the details of crimes, why the testimony of children and the elderly is infected with false memories, why innocent people make false confessions, why prosecutors put innocent people on trial, why juries produce irrational verdicts, and why judges make illogical rulings. For more than three decades, Cornell faculty have conducted path-breaking research on such topics and developed new theories that apply basic psychological and other social science principles to the law. Faculty exploit the full range of research methods in this work - from statistical analysis of national data sets, to field studies, to laboratory experiments, to brain-scanning studies in Cornell’s MRI Imaging Center – and their work is widely used in criminal and civil cases.
