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Famous Forensic Psychologists
Forensic psychology may not get a lot of press, but that does not mean that there haven’t been a few famous forensic psychologists in history. You may not have heard of any of these men, but they made major contributions to the industry that eventually changed the way forensic psychology works as a whole. All of the information you learn in your forensic psychology classes spawns from the work of these historical figures. Read on to find out more information about some of the most influential people in the field of forensic psychology.
J. McKeen Cattell
J. McKeen Cattell actually inspired forensic psychology before it even existed as a practice. In 1895, he began to study the psychological aspects of eyewitness testimonies in court. He spoke to some individuals at Columbia University, and he asked them to relay their versions of an event. Then he asked the participants to rate the level of confidence they had in their answers. During this study, he realized that the eyewitnesses had a great deal of inaccuracy in their stories. That gave rise to other studies on witnesses in the future, which eventually led to the practice of forensic psychology.
Alfred Binet
Any famous forensic psychologist of the modern world can thank Alfred Binet for giving them a career. This man replicated Cattell’s experiment nearly two centuries after it was completed, and his discoveries launched the development of forensic psychology. Many of the tools he used in his experiment later went on to help others in the profession, and some of them are still used in forensic psychology today.
William Stern
William Stern elaborated on the studies of his predecessors, and he was the person that identified the impact of emotions on a witness’s testimony. He asked a few students in a university to describe a dispute they had recently witnessed between two other students on campus. He recorded their answers and realized that most of the witnesses had problems in their stories. He concluded that this was a result of the emotions of the witnesses, and it is that theory that truly made forensic psychology the important study that it is today.
Hugo Munsterberg
Hugo Munsterberg was an influential person in psychology as whole, but he made several contributions to forensic psychology specifically over the course of his life. He believed in applying the principals of psychology to everyday life, which he did throughout his practice. In 1908, he authored a book called On the Witness Stand, which highlights the importance of psychology in the judicial system. That book showed others that forensic psychology could play a large role in the outcome of a criminal trial, and it made this practice even more influential that it was already becoming.
