Minimizing Bias in Forensic Decision Making

10 hours | 10 CEs

This on-demand professional training program on Minimizing Bias in Forensic Decision Making is presented by Itiel E. Dror, PhD, in partnership with Cognitive Consultants International. This badge-earning program can be shared digitally on platforms like LinkedIn or your resume and counts towards various certificates. Enroll to earn credit and share your new digital credentials with prospective employers and colleagues. This program counts as a foundational program in the certificates:

1. Criminal Forensic Assessment Certificate
2. Child Custody Evaluation Certificate
3. Civil Forensic Assessment Certificate
4. Juvenile Forensic Assessment Certificate
5. Violence Risk Assessment Certificate

The program covers the brain and cognitive issues relating to bias and cognitive processing and then connects the cognitive science issues to practical and specific topics in forensic decision-making. In addition to knowledge about the cognitive factors in forensic decision-making, the program also provides practical solutions to address weaknesses and best practices to enhance forensic practices.

Specific application to forensic mental health evaluation is provided through engaging discussions between Dr. Dror and Dr. Patricia Zapf, a forensic psychologist and expert in best practices in forensic mental health evaluation. In addition, Dr. Zapf provides elaboration on how the factors discussed by Dr. Dror apply to a forensic mental health evaluation.

Conducting forensic examinations is similar to other expert domains that require perception and interpretation of information, such as in the military, medical, and financial disciplines. Even in everyday life, humans constantly process information. Information is perceived, encoded, represented, transformed, stored, retrieved, compared to other details, evaluated, and assessed, to name just a few cognitive processes. The human mind is not a camera, as we actively process and compare information. It is naive to think we passively construct and experience reality and perceive the environment as 'it is.'

We engage in various cognitive processes that organize and structure the information as it comes in from the external world. Data is then further interpreted and processed in ways that highly depend on the human mind and cognitive factors. As we dynamically process information, we affect what we see, interpret, and evaluate it and our decision-making process. Thus, to enhance expert performance and understand that different factors may affect their work, especially in a highly specialized domain such as forensics, one needs to consider the role of the human mind and cognitive factors (Dror, 2015). While some education is provided to forensic experts, there is a lack of training in the psychological and cognitive elements involved in forensic decision-making. Thus, there is a lack of systematic training and professional development in the influence of human cognition on forensic work. This program is a step towards addressing training in the cognitive factors involved in forensic decision-making.