My research focuses on applications of basic social and cognitive psychology to various aspects of the law and criminal justice. In particular, my work focuses on four topics:

Located in the Psychology Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in New York, my students and I are conducting laboratory and field experiments; online surveys of police, forensic experts, confession experts, lay adults, and adolescents; and aggregated case studies.

This research is designed to examine (1) police interviews and interrogations; (2) judgments of truth and deception; (3) tactics that elicit true and false confessions; (4) how innocence puts innocents at risk; (5) actor and observer perceptions of custody; (6) jury decision-making in cases involving confession evidence; (7) the effects of video recording of interrogations on the behavior of police, suspects, and juries; (8) how confessions corrupt witnesses, alibis, and other evidence; (9) forensic confirmation biases in crime labs, and (10) confession effects on guilty pleas.

Ultimately, this research is aimed at improving policy, practice, and law, and raising public awareness concerning the psychology of wrongful convictions.