Meaningful Research in the Police Context

Abstract

I considered titling this chapter “The Confessions of a Disillusioned Academic”, since it would accurately describe the path which brought me to the work reported here. I have been an experimental psychologist for over two decades, with most of my work focused on human attention and memory. My career began with excitement about the promise of experimental psychology to provide insights about the nature of the human mind. However, the longer I engaged in the laboratory research enterprise, the more my disenchantment grew. During the past few years, I have become convinced that the laboratory has limited value to the student of human nature (a conclusion that I elaborate in this chapter). I remain convinced that careful, systematic research is still a useful approach to the study of mental processes, however, the research must be done in real contexts (that is, in the contexts one wishes to know about, not the artificial context of the laboratory). It was the search for meaningful contexts to study human memory and cognition that led me to the investigation of eyewitnesses and victims of crime. The current status of this research is summarized in this chapter.