Tess M S Neal
Biographic Data
| ID | 4126769 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tess M S Neal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tess M S |
| FAMILY NAME | Neal |
| SIGNATURE | NEAL T M S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Arizona State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9528-8638 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Psychological assessment in legal contexts: A survey of Indonesian psychologists
To add to a growing body of descriptive research on psychological assessment practices in various countries with different legal systems and standards, this study examined how Indonesian psychologists work as experts in legal cases and conduct forensic evaluations. A survey was conducted among Indonesian Forensic Psychology Association (APSIFOR) members, specifically those with experiences as experts in legal cases. We queried the experiences of …
Parsing Heterogeneity: Sex Differences in Youth Antisocial Behavior
This study examined sources of heterogeneity in antisocial behaviors in a large‐scale and nationally representative sample of n = 7655 youth from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study. Separate latent profile analyses were conducted for males and females using indicators of physical aggression, relational aggression, callous‐unemotional (CU) traits, and conduct symptom severity. Distinct profiles emerged within each sex. Among fema…
The legal intersection of psychosis and substance use: A mixed methods investigation of settled insanity
OBJECTIVE: Substance use and psychosis frequently co-occur and are complexly interrelated. Nevertheless, the legal system sometimes requires conclusions regarding the causal effects of substance use on psychosis (e.g., to determine insanity defense eligibility-including "settled" insanity from chronic substance use). We sought to understand how courts and mental health professionals conceptualize and resolve settled insanity claims. HYPOTHESES: S…
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law: Reflecting on the past, charting the future
Confirmatory information seeking is robust in psychologists’ diagnostic reasoning
OBJECTIVE: Across two experiments, we examined three cognitive biases (order effects, context effects, confirmatory bias) in licensed psychologists' diagnostic reasoning. HYPOTHESES: Our main prediction was that psychologist-participants would seek confirming versus disconfirming information after forming an initial diagnostic hypothesis, even given multiple opportunities to seek new information in the same case. We also expected that individual …
Assessing Motivations for Punishment: The Sentencing Goals Inventory
The purpose of these studies was to develop a novel measurement, the Sentencing Goals Inventory (SGI), for understanding the underlying people’s motivations for punishing justice-involved individuals. Prior scales have focused on punishment motives such as utilitarianism (incapacitation or deterrence) and retribution (“just deserts”) but have not assessed a rehabilitation motive (punishment with the goal of addressing the cause of criminality) in…
A general model of cognitive bias in human judgment and systematic review specific to forensic mental health
OBJECTIVE: Cognitive biases can impact experts' judgments and decisions. We offer a broad descriptive model of how bias affects human judgment. Although studies have explored the role of cognitive biases and debiasing techniques in forensic mental health, we conducted the first systematic review to identify, evaluate, and summarize the findings. HYPOTHESES: Given the exploratory nature of this review, we did not test formal hypotheses. General re…
Discretionary Prosecutorial Decision-Making: Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Bias in Intimate Partner Violence
Prosecutors exercise substantial discretion within the criminal justice process, potentially allowing for discrepant treatment of criminal cases. The purpose of this research was to examine the association between prosecutorial implicit biases and victim gender and sexual orientation in an intimate partner violence (IPV) case. Participants, 201 prosecutors from across the United States, completed two Implicit Association Tests to measure implicit…
Personality Assessment in Legal Contexts: Introduction to the Special Issue
The Law Meets Psychological Expertise: Eight Best Practices to Improve Forensic Psychological Assessment
We review the state of forensic mental health assessment. The field is in much better shape than in the past; however, significant problems of quality remain, with much room for improvement. We provide an overview of forensic psychology's history and discuss its possible future, with multiple audiences in mind. We distill decades of scholarship from and about fundamental basic science and forensic science, clinical and forensic psychology, and th…
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law adopts further open science practices and refreshes its commitment to generalizable empirical research
Forensic clinicians’ understanding of bias
Bias, or systematic influences that create errors in judgment, can affect psychological evaluations in ways that lead to erroneous diagnoses and opinions. Although these errors can have especially serious consequences in the criminal justice system, little research has addressed forensic psychologists’ awareness of well-known cognitive biases and debiasing strategies. We conducted a national survey with a sample of 120 randomly-selected licensed …
Forensic psychology and correctional psychology: Distinct but related subfields of psychological science and practice
This article delineates 2 separate but related subfields of psychological science and practice applicable across all major areas of the field (e.g., clinical, counseling, developmental, social, cognitive, community). Forensic and correctional psychology are related by their historical roots, involvement in the justice system, and the shared population of people they study and serve. The practical and ethical contexts of these subfields is distinc…
Validity, interrater reliability, and measures of adaptive behavior: Concerns regarding the probative versus prejudicial value
The question as to whether the assessment of adaptive behavior (AB) for evaluations of intellectual disability (ID) in the community meet the level of rigor necessary for admissibility in legal cases is addressed. Adaptive behavior measures have made their way into the forensic domain where scientific evidence is put under great scrutiny. Assessment of ID in capital murder proceedings has garnished a lot of attention, but assessments of ID in adu…
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Trust: Towards Theoretical and Methodological Integration
The dimensionality of trust-relevant constructs in four institutional domains: Results from confirmatory factor analyses
Using confirmatory factor analyses and multiple indicators per construct, we examined a number of theoretically derived factor structures pertaining to numerous trust-relevant constructs (from 9 to 12) across four institutional contexts (police, local governance, natural resources, state governance) and multiple participant-types (college students via an online survey, community residents as part of a city's budget engagement activity, a random s…
The cognitive underpinnings of bias in forensic mental health evaluations
We integrate multiple domains of psychological science to identify, better understand, and manage the effects of subtle but powerful biases in forensic mental health assessment. This topic is ripe for discussion, as research evidence that challenges our objectivity and credibility garners increased attention both within and outside of psychology. We begin by defining bias and provide rich examples from the judgment and decision-making literature …
Prison rape and psychological sequelae: A call for research
Prison rape is a pervasive and serious problem affecting many male inmates in U.S. prisons. This paper reviews the literature on prison rape prevalence, victimization risk factors, and the psychological and non-psychological sequelae of prison rape. We address several areas of inquiry needed to guide research and facilitate solutions to the problem of prison rape, especially given the context and intent of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) p…
The dimensionality of trust-relevant constructs in four institutional domains: Results from confirmatory factor analyses
Using confirmatory factor analyses and multiple indicators per construct, we examined a number of theoretically derived factor structures pertaining to numerous trust-relevant constructs (from 9 to 12) across four institutional contexts (police, local governance, natural resources, state governance) and multiple participant-types (college students via an online survey, community residents as part of a city's budget engagement activity, a random s…
The cognitive underpinnings of bias in forensic mental health evaluations
We integrate multiple domains of psychological science to identify, better understand, and manage the effects of subtle but powerful biases in forensic mental health assessment. This topic is ripe for discussion, as research evidence that challenges our objectivity and credibility garners increased attention both within and outside of psychology. We begin by defining bias and provide rich examples from the judgment and decision-making literature …
Prison rape and psychological sequelae: A call for research
Prison rape is a pervasive and serious problem affecting many male inmates in U.S. prisons. This paper reviews the literature on prison rape prevalence, victimization risk factors, and the psychological and non-psychological sequelae of prison rape. We address several areas of inquiry needed to guide research and facilitate solutions to the problem of prison rape, especially given the context and intent of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) p…
Forensic clinicians’ understanding of bias
Bias, or systematic influences that create errors in judgment, can affect psychological evaluations in ways that lead to erroneous diagnoses and opinions. Although these errors can have especially serious consequences in the criminal justice system, little research has addressed forensic psychologists’ awareness of well-known cognitive biases and debiasing strategies. We conducted a national survey with a sample of 120 randomly-selected licensed …
Forensic psychology and correctional psychology: Distinct but related subfields of psychological science and practice
This article delineates 2 separate but related subfields of psychological science and practice applicable across all major areas of the field (e.g., clinical, counseling, developmental, social, cognitive, community). Forensic and correctional psychology are related by their historical roots, involvement in the justice system, and the shared population of people they study and serve. The practical and ethical contexts of these subfields is distinc…
Validity, interrater reliability, and measures of adaptive behavior: Concerns regarding the probative versus prejudicial value
The question as to whether the assessment of adaptive behavior (AB) for evaluations of intellectual disability (ID) in the community meet the level of rigor necessary for admissibility in legal cases is addressed. Adaptive behavior measures have made their way into the forensic domain where scientific evidence is put under great scrutiny. Assessment of ID in capital murder proceedings has garnished a lot of attention, but assessments of ID in adu…
Prison rape and psychological sequelae: A call for research
Prison rape is a pervasive and serious problem affecting many male inmates in U.S. prisons. This paper reviews the literature on prison rape prevalence, victimization risk factors, and the psychological and non-psychological sequelae of prison rape. We address several areas of inquiry needed to guide research and facilitate solutions to the problem of prison rape, especially given the context and intent of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) p…
The cognitive underpinnings of bias in forensic mental health evaluations
We integrate multiple domains of psychological science to identify, better understand, and manage the effects of subtle but powerful biases in forensic mental health assessment. This topic is ripe for discussion, as research evidence that challenges our objectivity and credibility garners increased attention both within and outside of psychology. We begin by defining bias and provide rich examples from the judgment and decision-making literature …
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Trust: Towards Theoretical and Methodological Integration
The dimensionality of trust-relevant constructs in four institutional domains: Results from confirmatory factor analyses
Using confirmatory factor analyses and multiple indicators per construct, we examined a number of theoretically derived factor structures pertaining to numerous trust-relevant constructs (from 9 to 12) across four institutional contexts (police, local governance, natural resources, state governance) and multiple participant-types (college students via an online survey, community residents as part of a city's budget engagement activity, a random s…
Validity, interrater reliability, and measures of adaptive behavior: Concerns regarding the probative versus prejudicial value
The question as to whether the assessment of adaptive behavior (AB) for evaluations of intellectual disability (ID) in the community meet the level of rigor necessary for admissibility in legal cases is addressed. Adaptive behavior measures have made their way into the forensic domain where scientific evidence is put under great scrutiny. Assessment of ID in capital murder proceedings has garnished a lot of attention, but assessments of ID in adu…
Forensic psychology and correctional psychology: Distinct but related subfields of psychological science and practice
This article delineates 2 separate but related subfields of psychological science and practice applicable across all major areas of the field (e.g., clinical, counseling, developmental, social, cognitive, community). Forensic and correctional psychology are related by their historical roots, involvement in the justice system, and the shared population of people they study and serve. The practical and ethical contexts of these subfields is distinc…
Forensic clinicians’ understanding of bias
Bias, or systematic influences that create errors in judgment, can affect psychological evaluations in ways that lead to erroneous diagnoses and opinions. Although these errors can have especially serious consequences in the criminal justice system, little research has addressed forensic psychologists’ awareness of well-known cognitive biases and debiasing strategies. We conducted a national survey with a sample of 120 randomly-selected licensed …
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law adopts further open science practices and refreshes its commitment to generalizable empirical research
A general model of cognitive bias in human judgment and systematic review specific to forensic mental health
OBJECTIVE: Cognitive biases can impact experts' judgments and decisions. We offer a broad descriptive model of how bias affects human judgment. Although studies have explored the role of cognitive biases and debiasing techniques in forensic mental health, we conducted the first systematic review to identify, evaluate, and summarize the findings. HYPOTHESES: Given the exploratory nature of this review, we did not test formal hypotheses. General re…
Discretionary Prosecutorial Decision-Making: Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Bias in Intimate Partner Violence
Prosecutors exercise substantial discretion within the criminal justice process, potentially allowing for discrepant treatment of criminal cases. The purpose of this research was to examine the association between prosecutorial implicit biases and victim gender and sexual orientation in an intimate partner violence (IPV) case. Participants, 201 prosecutors from across the United States, completed two Implicit Association Tests to measure implicit…
Personality Assessment in Legal Contexts: Introduction to the Special Issue
The Law Meets Psychological Expertise: Eight Best Practices to Improve Forensic Psychological Assessment
We review the state of forensic mental health assessment. The field is in much better shape than in the past; however, significant problems of quality remain, with much room for improvement. We provide an overview of forensic psychology's history and discuss its possible future, with multiple audiences in mind. We distill decades of scholarship from and about fundamental basic science and forensic science, clinical and forensic psychology, and th…
Assessing Motivations for Punishment: The Sentencing Goals Inventory
The purpose of these studies was to develop a novel measurement, the Sentencing Goals Inventory (SGI), for understanding the underlying people’s motivations for punishing justice-involved individuals. Prior scales have focused on punishment motives such as utilitarianism (incapacitation or deterrence) and retribution (“just deserts”) but have not assessed a rehabilitation motive (punishment with the goal of addressing the cause of criminality) in…
Confirmatory information seeking is robust in psychologists’ diagnostic reasoning
OBJECTIVE: Across two experiments, we examined three cognitive biases (order effects, context effects, confirmatory bias) in licensed psychologists' diagnostic reasoning. HYPOTHESES: Our main prediction was that psychologist-participants would seek confirming versus disconfirming information after forming an initial diagnostic hypothesis, even given multiple opportunities to seek new information in the same case. We also expected that individual …
The legal intersection of psychosis and substance use: A mixed methods investigation of settled insanity
OBJECTIVE: Substance use and psychosis frequently co-occur and are complexly interrelated. Nevertheless, the legal system sometimes requires conclusions regarding the causal effects of substance use on psychosis (e.g., to determine insanity defense eligibility-including "settled" insanity from chronic substance use). We sought to understand how courts and mental health professionals conceptualize and resolve settled insanity claims. HYPOTHESES: S…
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law: Reflecting on the past, charting the future
Psychological assessment in legal contexts: A survey of Indonesian psychologists
To add to a growing body of descriptive research on psychological assessment practices in various countries with different legal systems and standards, this study examined how Indonesian psychologists work as experts in legal cases and conduct forensic evaluations. A survey was conducted among Indonesian Forensic Psychology Association (APSIFOR) members, specifically those with experiences as experts in legal cases. We queried the experiences of …
Parsing Heterogeneity: Sex Differences in Youth Antisocial Behavior
This study examined sources of heterogeneity in antisocial behaviors in a large‐scale and nationally representative sample of n = 7655 youth from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study. Separate latent profile analyses were conducted for males and females using indicators of physical aggression, relational aggression, callous‐unemotional (CU) traits, and conduct symptom severity. Distinct profiles emerged within each sex. Among fema…
Psychology (13 works) · Political science (8 works) · Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Applied Psychology (6 works) · Criminology (6 works) · Forensic psychology (6 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Applied Psychology (4 works) · Clinical Psychology (4 works)