Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law

competence should be maintained through ongoing

experience, acquisition of knowledge (e.g., reading,

continuing education), and/or professional consultation.

When expanding one’s expertise by undertaking a new

type of forensic service, the ethical forensic practitioner

seeks supervision and/or consultation with another

forensic psychological practitioner who has established

expertise in that area. The ethical forensic practitioner

does not misrepresent his or her competencein commu-

nications to potential clients, either verbally (e.g., on

accepting a referral, during expert qualification) or in

writing (e.g., in one’s curriculum vita).

An ethical forensic practitioner should also have

some degree of substantive competence with regard to

his or her knowledge of the legal system.Although it

is not necessary to have competence as an attorney, it

is important that a forensic practitioner be aware of

the legal aspects of the particular forensic service he

or she is providing, such as the elements of the psy-

cholegal question, the examinees’ rights in participat-

ing in the examination, and the rules of evidence for

providing an expert opinion to the court.

Finally, an ethical forensic practitioner demonstrates

an appreciation of individual and contextual differ-

ences.Specifically, the forensic practitioner is able to

effectively balance his or her knowledge of general

psychological principles with his or her understanding

of the individual being examined, as well as the context

in which an examination is occurring. For example, an

individual’s test-taking style may reflect cultural differ-

ences rather than clinical psychopathology (e.g.,

“healthy paranoia” vs. clinical paranoia). Similarly, an

individual’s response style may vary greatly from one

context to another (e.g., self-disclosure of problems in

a personal injury examination may be greater than self-

disclosure of problems in a child custody examination)

that is consistent with the demand characteristics of that

setting and not necessarily evidence of a deliberate

effort to distort one’s self-presentation.

Judgment

The judgment of the ethical forensic practitioner

should be guided by at least four basic principles: rel-

evance, accuracy, equitable perspective, and candor.

With regard to relevance,the ethical and competent

forensic practitioner focuses the scope of his or her

examination on the legally relevant factors that are

subject to psychological inquiry. For example, when

examining an individual’s competency to stand trial,

forensic psychological practitioners limit the scope of

their examination to assessing whether the individual

has an impaired ability to understand the nature of the

proceedings against him or her and/or the ability to

cooperate with his or her attorney. For any given

aspect of an individual’s history to be relevant to the

examination (e.g., that the individual was sexually

abused as a child), it must be relevant to the psychole-

gal issue (e.g., does his history of child sexual abuse

impair his current functioning?).

An ethical forensic psychologist should also pre-

sent his or her findings accurately—in other words,

with objectivity, impartiality, and nonpartisanship.

The role of the forensic psychologist is not to advo-

cate for one “side” or another but, rather, to provide

the court with all relevant psychological information

so that the court can render its decision.

To maintain accuracy and objectivity, the ethical

forensic practitioner should maintain an equitable

perspectiveof the various “sides” of the psycholegal

issue and test plausible rival hypotheses for each for-

mulated opinion. For example, a forensic practitioner

conducting a personal injury examination should con-

sider all potential causes of an examinee’s psycholog-

ical damage before rendering an opinion about the

damage caused by the alleged tortuous acts.

As part of formulating an equitable perspective, the

ethical forensic practitioner should assign fair weight

to the dataon which the opinion was founded and not

be unfairly or unduly prejudicial in presenting the

data. For example, a father may have used cocaine on

one or two occasions since the birth of a child, but this

fact does not, in and of itself, provide evidence of

cocaine abuse or dependence—and more important, it

does not directly speak to his parenting capacity.

Rather, past cocaine use is one data point that must be

integrated with other information about the father and

weighed against data known about the mother.

Unlike many other types of psychological services,

forensic psychology involves the integration of multi-

ple sources of data, including the use of collateral

informants. These collateral sources of data may be

useful in obtaining information about an examinee

that the examinee is unwilling or unable to provide on

his or her own. However, in integrating collateral

sources of data, the forensic practitioner should be

aware of the nature of the relationship between the

collateral informant and the examinee and the poten-

tial bias inherent in such a relationship. Accordingly,

the forensic practitioner should not rely on such data

in isolation but, rather, integrate this information with

other data to corroborate or disconfirm hypotheses.

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