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The Clinical and Legal Judgment Lab at Iowa State University conducts research on the way people think and reach decisions, and what can go wrong resulting in poor judgments. We are particularly interested in human judgment processes as they intersect with the law. We use multiple methods to study real-world behaviors, and we embrace open science practices.
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Lab Updates
Mar 2025: New paper published in Nature Reviews Psychology titled Psychological Insights for Judging Expertise and Implications for Legal Contexts.
Dec 2025: Confirmatory Information Seeking is Robust in Psychologists' Diagnostic Reasoning is published in Law and
Human Behavior. Gif post here.
May 2024: Ciera Arnett, M.S. defends her dissertation, "The legal intersection of psychosis and substance abuse: A mixed-
methods investigation of settled insanity" and will complete her predoctoral internship in 2024-2025.
Jan 2024: Maya Irvin-Vitela, M.S. joins the lab as a Psychology PhD student at Iowa State University.
Jan 2024: Tess Neal steps into the Incoming Editor-in-Chief role at the APA Journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law
Dec 2023: Pamela (Nicky) Sandberg, J.D. graduates from the M.S. psychology program.
Sep 2023: Tess Neal participates in the AAAS & NASEM public conference, "Scientific Evidence & the Courts" in Washington DC
Aug 2023: The lab has moved! We are now part of Iowa State University after making a cross-country move from Arizona State.
May 2023: Elizabeth Mathers graduates with her M.S. degree in psychology.
Jan 2023: Jake Plantz, former MS student in the lab who is now a quant psych PhD student at McGill University, published with
Tess Neal and a team of co-authors his master's project in Criminal Justice and Behavior, titled "Assessing motivations
for punishment: The Sentencing Goals Inventory."
Dec 2022: Kristen McCowan & Emily Denne become the 1st graduates of our Law and Psychology PhD program.
July 2022: Tess Neal and Elizabeth Mathers publish with colleagues "The law meets psychological expertise: Eight best practices to improve forensic psychological assessment" in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science. This paper accompanies an expert report. Specifically, Tess Neal testified as as expert witness alongside collaborator Kristy Martire at the Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty (the "Mass Casualty Commission") to evaluation the quality of a particular psychological autopsy and behavioral profile. A twitter thread about all of this is here. Our expert report is here, and a video of our expert testimony is here.
Feb - July: Tess Neal went to Australia for a few months on a Fulbright Scholar Award. She worked with Kristy Martire and others at the University of New South Wales, and traveled around the region to develop further relationships with other scholars as well. Her partner and kids went too - was an experience of a lifetime!
Feb 2022: Tess Neal publishes a FREE edited special issue, Personality Assessments in Legal Contexts, in Journal of Personality Assessment. The issue provides comprehensive, credible reviews of the psychometric evidence for and legal status of some of the most commonly-used psychological and personality assessment measures used in forensic evaluations. Twitter thread about the issue is here. The issue responds to Neal and colleagues’ (2019) call to improve
the state of and access to knowledge about psychological assessments in legal contexts, and encourages critical
thinking about forensic assessment in the spirit of improvement. See also news coverage by the Associated
Press, NPR Phoenix Affiliate (KJZZ), andWired.
Dec 2025: Confirmatory Information Seeking is Robust in Psychologists' Diagnostic Reasoning is published in Law and
Human Behavior. Gif post here.
May 2024: Ciera Arnett, M.S. defends her dissertation, "The legal intersection of psychosis and substance abuse: A mixed-
methods investigation of settled insanity" and will complete her predoctoral internship in 2024-2025.
Jan 2024: Maya Irvin-Vitela, M.S. joins the lab as a Psychology PhD student at Iowa State University.
Jan 2024: Tess Neal steps into the Incoming Editor-in-Chief role at the APA Journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law
Dec 2023: Pamela (Nicky) Sandberg, J.D. graduates from the M.S. psychology program.
Sep 2023: Tess Neal participates in the AAAS & NASEM public conference, "Scientific Evidence & the Courts" in Washington DC
Aug 2023: The lab has moved! We are now part of Iowa State University after making a cross-country move from Arizona State.
May 2023: Elizabeth Mathers graduates with her M.S. degree in psychology.
Jan 2023: Jake Plantz, former MS student in the lab who is now a quant psych PhD student at McGill University, published with
Tess Neal and a team of co-authors his master's project in Criminal Justice and Behavior, titled "Assessing motivations
for punishment: The Sentencing Goals Inventory."
Dec 2022: Kristen McCowan & Emily Denne become the 1st graduates of our Law and Psychology PhD program.
July 2022: Tess Neal and Elizabeth Mathers publish with colleagues "The law meets psychological expertise: Eight best practices to improve forensic psychological assessment" in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science. This paper accompanies an expert report. Specifically, Tess Neal testified as as expert witness alongside collaborator Kristy Martire at the Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty (the "Mass Casualty Commission") to evaluation the quality of a particular psychological autopsy and behavioral profile. A twitter thread about all of this is here. Our expert report is here, and a video of our expert testimony is here.
Feb - July: Tess Neal went to Australia for a few months on a Fulbright Scholar Award. She worked with Kristy Martire and others at the University of New South Wales, and traveled around the region to develop further relationships with other scholars as well. Her partner and kids went too - was an experience of a lifetime!
Feb 2022: Tess Neal publishes a FREE edited special issue, Personality Assessments in Legal Contexts, in Journal of Personality Assessment. The issue provides comprehensive, credible reviews of the psychometric evidence for and legal status of some of the most commonly-used psychological and personality assessment measures used in forensic evaluations. Twitter thread about the issue is here. The issue responds to Neal and colleagues’ (2019) call to improve
the state of and access to knowledge about psychological assessments in legal contexts, and encourages critical
thinking about forensic assessment in the spirit of improvement. See also news coverage by the Associated
Press, NPR Phoenix Affiliate (KJZZ), andWired.
