Forensic Psychology: courses and curriculum
Disclaimer ECTS: the number of ECTS credits earned after successfully concluding this CES course is in accordance with Maastricht University CES guidelines. Please consult with your home university or UM faculty if these credits will be accepted as part of your programme and, if necessary, converted to the credit system acknowledged by your home university.
Full course description
The aim of the three-week Forensic Psychology course is to introduce students to the application of psychology to the legal system and to raise awareness about the problems that arise when psychology is applied to law in practice. This course is interesting and relevant for all psychology students, but also for students interested in the legal field.
The area of Forensic Psychology deals with all issues that lie at the intersection of human behavior and the law. Such issues range from how reliable eyewitness identifications are to whether some criminals have a brain dysfunction making them permanently dangerous to society and not responsible for their actions, to the role of experts in court and procedures of police interrogations. The role of psychologists within these themes is to ask questions that have a direct relevance to the legal arena and to conduct research to address these questions.
Drawing from areas of social, cognitive, developmental, clinical, and neuropsychology, this course will deal with questions such as: How can police interrogations lead to false confessions? How can the reliability of eyewitness identifications be measured? How dangerous are sex offenders? What are the dangers of bias in expert testimonies?
Through working with cases, students will be familiarized with various issues in the field in this course, for example police procedures, legal backgrounds, psychological experiments, and the disputes that arise when psychology is applied to the law. Moreover, several small exercises in class will give students the opportunity to get a small taste of which tests and procedures are used by people working in the field.
Goals
- Provide knowledge of some of the the current issues, controversies and trends in the filed of Forensic Psychology
- Familiarize students with the terminology of Forensic Psychology
- Provide in-depth comprehension of the psychological and legal aspects of the field
- Give descriptions of the methods typically used and the experimental work done in this discipline
ECTS credits
Students can earn 7.5 ECTS credits upon completion of this course.
Prerequisites
Students should have a basic background in psychology and an interested in the legal system.
Teaching methods
- Assignments
- Lectures
- PBL
- Presentations
- Work in subgroups
Assessment methods
- Exams
- Final paper
- Presentation