Psychology and the Legal System: An Interview with Edie Greene

Abstract

William Douglas Woody completed his doctoral work at Colorado State University and is now Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Northern Colorado. He teaches and conducts research in the areas of psychology and the law, social psychology, and history and systems of psychology. He is the recipient of regional and national teaching awards. While completing his doctoral work, Doug started collaborating with Edie Greene on projects related to civil jury decision making. Edie Greene earned her BA in psychology from Stanford University, her MA from the University of Colorado–Boulder, and her PhD in psychology and law from the University of Washington. Additionally, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington from 1983 to 1986, and she served as Fellow in Law and Psychology at Harvard Law School from 1994 to 1995. Edie is currently Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs where she conducts research on jury trials, eyewitness memory, and other topics in psychology and law. Her work has been funded by number of federal agencies, and she has earned extensive research recognition including an award from her college for Outstanding Research and Creative Works. Edie is a coauthor of the textbook Psychology and the Legal System (5th ed.), published by Wadsworth (2002), and she coauthored Determining Damages: The Psychology of Jury Awards, published by the American Psychological Association (2002). She has published more than 70 articles and book chapters as well as an annotated bibliography on the adversarial system (Strier & Greene, 1990). In addition to conducting research, she has served as a trial consultant, and she has testified extensively as an expert witness on eyewitness memory and jury decision making. Edie has been active in the American Psychology–Law Society in numerous roles including membership on the executive committee. She serves on the editorial boards of Law and Human Behavior and Psychology, Public Policy and Law.

A historical review and resource guide to the scholarship of teaching and training in psychology and law and forensic psychology.

“…Many authors have described exercises or in-class demonstrations to teach students about concepts in an active and creative rather than passive manner. As noted by Perry et al (1996), such “active learning techniques” benefit students by increasing student interest in material and motivation for learning (Weimer, 1987) and encouraging deeper learning and critical thinking skills as compared to traditional lecture formats (Bonwell & Eison, 1991; see also Fulero et al, 1999; E. Greene in Woody, 2003). Watson (1963) was the first to mention active learning techniques, discussing how strategies from medical and social work classes, such as group discussion of specific case problems, can be adapted to engage law students in thinking about psychological and psychiatric issues.…”