Statement psychology

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The statement psychology is a branch of forensic psychology and deals with the psychology of testimony.

Area of ​​responsibility

Statement psychology applies fundamental knowledge from the field of perception, memory, development and social psychology to statements as a form of cognitive performance. The special focus of testimonial psychological research is the assessment of the credibility of witness statements, the suitability of children as witnesses and the consequences of suggestive interviews.

The subject of testimony psychology is less the general credibility of a witness in the sense of a personality trait, but rather the assessment of a concrete statement within a specific context. Here, the statement psychology is concerned with assessing the statement efficiency , credibility specific witness statements and possible sources of error.

The assessment of the content of the experience of witness statements is based on the content in a hypothesis-led diagnostic process based on empirically proven quality criteria (feature-oriented content analysis ). The credibility of the witness serves as a null hypothesis , i.e. H. it is negated until it can no longer be reconciled with the information collected. An analysis of the personality of the statement, the statement made and the quality of the statement is carried out.

Historical development

The historical development of expressive psychology can be divided into several phases.

Early Experimental Research (1900-1920)

As early as 1895, the psychologist JM Cattell was experimenting in the laboratory with the quality of witness statements. In 1902, the psychologist William Stern published the anthology Psychology of Statement for the first time with the aim of founding an interdisciplinary study group that dealt scientifically with the "statement of the word". Some statements psychological experiments go back to Stern, u. a. he let people instructed as “perpetrators” storm into his lecture and the students then had to describe the course of the disturbance in detail. After emigrating to the USA in 1908, the German psychologist Hugo Munsterberg also experimented with problems of assessing the credibility of witness statements and suggested developing a so-called “lie detector”.

Empirical-casuistic approach (1950–1980)

After a latency phase of around 20 years between 1930 and 1950, which was characterized by a lack of interest in testimonial psychological research, a phase of field research followed. The landmark ruling of the Federal Court of Justice of 1954, which for the first time ordered an assignment of experts to assess the credibility of witnesses, provided that the statements of children or young people represented the sole or essential evidence. In the course of this, the psychologist Udo Undeutsch published the anthology forensic psychology of the manual psychology for the first time in 1967 , in which he dealt, among other things, with the credibility of witness statements and judicial expertise. The real indicators for witness statements formulated by Undeutsch are still used today in the context of the credibility assessment. This phase of expressive psychological research was characterized by the focus on sexual offenses, by the use of experience reports from practically active experts and by an almost complete absence of laboratory experiments. It was mainly characterized by an empirical-casuistic approach.

Experimental validation phase (1980-2000)

The catalogs of criteria for assessing credibility developed in the 1960s and 1970s were increasingly systematized and empirically validated in the early 1980s. The result of this research activity was, among other things, the overall criteriology for the assessment of statements developed by Max Steller and Günter Köhnken in 1989. Based on problems of practical witness appraisal, the Anglo-American region in particular dealt with questions of the suggestibility of child witness statements.

Integration phase (from 2000)

According to Greuel , the fifth phase of expressive psychological research is primarily characterized by the integration of the expert knowledge gathered over the past century. In addition to suggestion research, aspects of personality psychology , stress research and the assessment of traumatic events are the focus of testimony research.

Research spectrum

In addition to the practical application in the context of the credibility assessment by experts in court , testamentary psychological research also occupies a large area within forensic psychology . On the one hand, it includes field and simulation studies on the differences between experience-based and invented descriptions and, on the other hand, individual case assessments of specific witnesses or testimonies ( case reports ).

Field and simulation studies

Differences between experience-based and fictional descriptions can be examined either in field tests or in simulation studies. While in field studies there is usually no reliable external criterion for determining the truthfulness of a statement, which makes comparability difficult, simulation studies are often only slightly realistic and are therefore less applicable to real-world situations. Both research approaches must therefore be considered in addition.

Internationally, various field studies have shown that in experience-based, i.e. H. Children's statements based on real events about experiences of sexual abuse contained significantly more reality criteria than dubious statements. Simulation studies also predominantly support the hypothesis of a qualitative difference between true and made-up statements. Nevertheless, there is great heterogeneity in the studies, which is likely to be due to different age groups, motivational starting positions, survey techniques and interviewer characteristics.

Suggestion research

In the meantime, numerous studies suggest that the use of suggestive methods can lead to test subjects making non-experience-congruent descriptions of personally significant and stressful events. In studies on suggestibility , between 20 and 80% of children agreed to have actually experienced a suggested event; in adults, the rate was between 15 and 25%, and in isolated cases even 60%. Suggestion is even able to form long-lasting pseudo memories ("rich false memories"; see experiments on memory falsification ). These are difficult to distinguish from real memories. The feature-oriented content analysis can only differentiate meaningfully between true and false statements, but not between true and suggested memories. Therefore, in these cases, the origin of the statement and the history of the statement must be explored in more detail, that is, to what extent a suggestion could have taken place and to what extent the suggestive conditions not only potentially but actually had an influence on the content of the statement.

Critique of the statement psychology

Critics say that the credibility assessment is an enormous burden, especially for traumatized witnesses, that it rarely comes to positive assessments of statements inappropriately and that it does not take enough account of the fact that traumatization can worsen the memory performance of those affected by neurobiological changes in the brain, which in traumatized people can increased likelihood of misjudgments. The question was also raised as to whether the “null hypothesis” method used as the gold standard was still viable in cases that were long ago.

Experts, on the other hand, show that the witnesses' satisfaction and stressful experiences depend in particular on the outcome of the report, i.e. that in the positive case the review process was predominantly experienced as helpful and positive, in the negative case, however, as stressful. Individual statements by witnesses who were used by critics could not be considered representative in this context. Studies have also shown that experts assess testimony as experience-based in over 50% of cases, which, according to experts, does not speak for a disproportionately high rejection rate.

education

Statutory psychology content is an integral part of legal psychology curricula, e.g. B. for the acquisition of the title “Specialist Psychologist for Legal Psychology” from the BDP and the DGPS or in the context of legal psychology master’s courses. Psychotherapists can also seek training as forensic experts, which among other things enables them to prepare statements psychological reports.

So far, apart from the rather vague BGH ruling in 1999, there are no mandatory national minimum standards for statements of psychology, but various experts and committees have made clear recommendations on quality assurance.

literature

  • Friedrich Arntzen: Psychology of the testimony: system of credibility features . Verlag CH Beck, 5th edition, 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-61257-2 .
  • Max Steller: Nothing but the truth. Why anyone can be found innocent. Heyne Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-453-20090-6 .
  • Gabriele Jansen: Witness and statement psychology . Verlag CF Müller, 2nd edition, 2011, ISBN 978-3-8114-4861-2 .
  • Luise Greuel, Thomas Fabian & Michael Stadler: Psychology of the testimony. Results of legal psychological research, BELTZ Psychologie Verlags Union, 2010, ISBN 978-3-621-27384-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Luise Greuel: Legal and statement psychology . In: Porsch, Torsten & Werdes, Bärbel (ed.): Polizeipsychologie . Hogrefe, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8017-2692-8 , pp. 291-318 .
  2. ↑ Federal Court of Justice: Order of May 30, 2000 (PDF) May 30, 2000, accessed on January 28, 2019 .
  3. ^ Niehaus, Susanna: Feature-oriented content analysis . In: Volbert, Renate & Steller, Max (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Rechtsspsychologie . Hogrefe, Göttingen 2008, p. 311 .
  4. ↑ BGH, communication dated July 30, 1999 - 63/99. Retrieved January 28, 2020 .
  5. ^ A b Steller, Max: Verification of credibility . In: Volbert, Renate & Steller, Max (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Reschtspsychologie . Hogrefe, Göttingen 2008, p. 302 .
  6. ↑ a b c Denis Köhler & Kathrin Scharmach: On the history of legal psychology in Germany with special consideration of the legal psychology section of the BDP . In: Practice of Legal Psychology . tape 23 , no. 2 , 2013, p. 455-468 .
  7. ↑ Wiliam Stern (ed.): Psychology of the statement with special consideration of problems of the administration of justice, pedagogy, psychiatry and historical research . tape 2 , no. 3 . Publisher by Johann Ambrosius Barth, Leipzig 1905 ( org.pl [PDF]).
  8. ↑ Katja Iken: Invention of the lie detector. In: DER SPIEGEL - history. February 3, 2015, accessed January 28, 2020 .
  9. ↑ a b c Petra Hänert: The validity of substantive credibility features under suggestive conditions. An empirical study on preschool children. (Dissertation) . Christian Albrechts University, Kiel 2007 ( d-nb.info ).
  10. ^ Federal Court of Justice: judgment of December 14, 1954 - 5 StR 416/54 . In: BGHSt . tape 7 , p. 82-86 ( juris.de ).
  11. ↑ L. Greuel: Suggestibility and reliability of statements - a (new) problem in forensic-psychological practice? In: L. Greuel, T. Fabian & M. Stadler (Eds.): Psychology of the testimony . BELTZ Psychologie Verlags Union, Weinheim 1997, p. 211-220 .
  12. ↑ a b c Renate Volbert: Standards of the psychological credibility diagnosis . In: Hans-Ludwig Kröber & Max Steller (eds.): Psychological assessment in criminal proceedings . Steinkopff Verlag, Darmstadt 2005, p. 171-203 .
  13. ^ Renate Volbert: Suggestion . In: Renate Volbert & Max Steller (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Rechtsspsychologie . Hogrefe, Göttingen 2008, p. 331-341 .
  14. ↑ Renate Volbert: Dorsch Lexikon der Psychologie. Verlag Hans Huber, accessed on January 28, 2020 .
  15. ^ Renate Volbert: Credibility assessment - more than feature-oriented content analysis . In: Forensic Psychiatry, Psychology, Criminology . tape 2 , no. 1 , 2008, p. 12-19 , doi : 10.1007 / s11757-008-0055-y .
  16. ↑ JM Fegert, J. Gerke & M. Rassenhofer: Enormous professional incomprehension towards traumatized people. Is the credibility assessment and its undifferentiated application in different areas of law an unreasonable expectation for those affected by sexual violence? In: Neurology . tape 32 , 2018, p. 525-534 .
  17. ↑ Thomas Wolf: Scheinerinnerungen and "false memory" - current legal questions to the statement psychology . In: Forensic Psychiatry, Psychology, Criminology . tape 13 , no. 2 , 2019, p. 136 , doi : 10.1007 / s11757-019-00527-6 .
  18. ^ A b Renate Volbert, Jonas Schemmel & Anett Tamm: The statement psychological assessment: a narrowed perspective? In: Forensic Psychiatry, Psychology, Criminology . tape 13 , 2019, doi : 10.1007 / s11757-019-00528-5 .
  19. ↑ curriculum. In: Master of Legal Psychology. University of Bonn, accessed on January 28, 2020 .
  20. ↑ Legal Psychology. In: German Academy of Psychologists. Retrieved January 28, 2020 (German).
  21. ↑ Further training for court expert training - IVS - Institute for Behavioral Therapy, Behavioral Medicine and Sexology. Retrieved January 28, 2020 (German).
  22. ↑ Luise Greuel: quality standards expressive psychological opinion on the credibility of testimony . In: Monthly for criminology and criminal law reform . tape 83 , no. 2 , 2000, pp. 59-70 , doi : 10.1515 / mks-2000-00012 .
  23. ↑ Renate Volbert: Quality assurance in the credibility assessment . In: Forensic Psychiatry, Psychology, Criminology . tape 4 , 2012, doi : 10.1007 / s11757-012-0183-2 .