1242 Book reviews

Overall, this text offered a good introduction to the field of social problem solving, and
would be recommended to practitioners working with offenders.

Dr. CAROL A. IRELAND

Mersey Care NHS Trust and
University of Central Lancashire, UK
Published online in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/acp.1269

Psycholegal science: A tool for understanding real world issues in criminal justice and the law

PSYCHOLOGY AND LAW: AN EMPIRICAL PERSPECTIVE. N. B. Brewer and K. D. Williams

(Eds.). The Guilford Press, New York, 2005. No. of pages 516. ISBN 1-59385-122-7. Price $60.00
(US) (hardcover).

Brewer and Kipling have brought together an impressive group of researchers for this
edited volume on psychology and law. This book explicitly focuses on experimental
psychology and its applications to relevant issues in the criminal justice system. It does not
cover clinical issues related to psychology and law. In doing so, they unapologetically turn
the critical eye of empirical science on to the criminal justice system uncovering the real-
world problems ripe for theoretical and methodological analysis. This refreshing take on
matters focuses on three main goals: ‘(1) illustrate how theoretical advances in the broad
fields of experimental psychology can provide valuable directions for applied research, (2)
highlight many of the methodological difficulties with which applied researchers are
confronted and (3) show how carefully controlled experimental research can be used to
make meaningful contributions to the solution of everyday or real-world problems’
(Brewer, Williams, & Semmler, 2005, p. 1).
The organizing structure of the volume is the criminal justice timeline itself. This
organization allows the information to be presented in the order in which the processes
occur in real life. As such, the timeline approach acts as an advanced organizer, and from the
first (okay second) page the reader has a good sense of what information will be covered and
when. This approach also more clearly highlights how different aspects of experimental
psychology are relevant at different points of the timeline, by virtue of the type of perceptual,
cognitive, developmental and social factors operating in a given context.
The editors and contributors aim to have as their audience advanced undergraduate and
graduate students in psychology, criminal justice and law programs, as well as researchers,
legal scholars, and professionals such as police, lawyers and judges. All of these people
will find the book useful. The primary audience though will likely be graduate students
who might find this book assigned as their main text for a seminar in psychology and law.
A comprehensive index and reference sections for each chapter also add to the utility of
this book as a classroom text.
Brewer, Williams and Semmler nicely introduce the edited volume, covering the
aforementioned information as well as providing a helpful chapter-by-chapter summary.
This introductory chapter effectively introduces the scope, style and content of the entire
volume. The remaining chapters cover investigative interviewing, detecting deception,
eyewitness recall, testimony and identification, false memories, pre-trial publicity, trial
strategy, methodological issues regarding jury research, juror and jury decision making,
comprehension of judicial instructions, sentencing and lastly a chapter on how psycho-
logical science can most effectively (and positively) impact legal policy.

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 20: 1239–1245 (2006)
 Book reviews 1243

All of the chapters cover recent developments as well as provide comprehensive

coverage of the topic. The book’s best feature is the authors’ explicit reliance on data
to support the information presented and the conclusions drawn. For example, Powell,
Fisher and Wright’s coverage of investigative interviewing begins with a strong stance:
good interviews are really good; bad interviews hurt memory and ultimately the criminal
justice processes that rely on it. All of their conclusions are supported by presentation of
empirical work that convincingly bolsters their opening remarks. The authors’ are also
clear to focus on literature that is directly relevant to psychology and law. Granhag and
Vrij particularly rely on this approach in their coverage of the detection of deception. They
acknowledge the broad interest in deception both in academia and everyday life, while
focusing explicitly on deception research as it relates to psychology and law. As is
common to all of the chapters in this volume, the authors stay close to the data in
supporting their ideas and summaries of each area. The book concludes with Gary Wells’
chapter on how psychological science can best (and most appropriately) impact legal
policy. According to Wells, the first step is to do the best we can to understand the people,
the system and the constraints these people face. Wells also clearly describes the single
versus multiple effects problem in which we as scientists often focus on a single effect in
an experiment, whereas policy makers must focus on the influence of multiple factors
in their evaluation and development of policy. Similar to this idea is the scientist’s reliance
on data and the policy makers interest in (and use of) individual case studies—the impact
of a specific situation or an individual person’s experience cannot (and according to Wells,
should not) be denied. For psychologists to work most effectively with the members of the
legal system we must appreciate these contingencies.
The primary strength of this book is its unabashed goal of applying experimental
psychology to relevant legal topics. The contributing researchers embrace the rigor and
tools of experimental psychology, and clearly use them to uncover and understand the
complexities of human thought and behaviour in criminal justice and legal processes.
While a few were highlighted here, all of the contributors do an excellent job of applying
psychological science to the law, while never losing sight of either.

REFERENCE

Brewer, N., Williams, K. D., & Semmler, C. (2005). Psychology and law research: An overview. In
N. Brewer, & K. D. Williams (Eds.), Psychology and law: An empirical perspective. New York:
The Guilford Press.

M. KIMBERLY MACLIN
University of Northern Iowa, USA
Published online in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/acp.1256

A counterfactual view of causality

CAUSAL MODELS. S. Sloman. Oxford University Press, New York, 2005. No. of pages 224. ISBN
0-19-518311-8. Price £17.99 (hardback).

‘Causal modeling’ is a new research area ranging across many disciplines, from artificial
intelligence to statistics, from econometrics to philosophy and cognitive psychology, as

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 20: 1239–1245 (2006)