In the Confait case in 1972 the English legal system had been shaken by a miscarriage of justice based on false confessions, another topic originally highlighted by Münsterberg. Only four persons, for instance, among forty noticed that the negro had nothing on his head; the others gave him a derby, or a high hat, and so on. If we turn our attention with strongest effort to certain parts of a complex impression, we may yet feel in our recollection more certain about those parts of which we hardly took notice than about those to which we devoted our attention. I can remember no more than that about it. The Münsterberg illusion is a compelling phenomenon for which there is no generally accepted explanation. Yet here again we can reach the most hopeless forms through small steps from the experiences of our daily life. Of course, the experiment was made under most different conditions, with different pauses, different material, different length of the series, different influences, different distribution, different subjects, but after some years of work, facts showed themselves which can stand as facts. Of course, his buckram-bound volumes of old decisions guide him, but those decisions report again only that the one or the other judge, relying on his common-sense, thought recency more weighty than frequency, or frequency more important than impressiveness, or perhaps the opposite. The whole had been a comedy, carefully planned and rehearsed by the three actors for the purpose of studying the exactitude of observation and recollection. The sound which I produced was the tone of a large tuning-fork, which I struck with a … I find among my notes another case, where everything depended upon the time which had passed between a whistle signal from the street and the noise of an explosion. Search Browse; Resources When he observed the body, he at once reported the matter to his father at the house, [p. 164] and the father notified the police. Years ago his friend died; now arises the illusion that he has poisoned him. Just for this reason it does not interfere with the purposes of healthy action. Nothing of all that [p. 68] we have mentioned belongs to the domain of the physician. Hugo Münsterberg (June 1, 1863 – December 16, 1916) was a German-American psychologist.He was one of the pioneers in applied psychology, extending his research and theories to Industrial/Organizational (I/O), legal, medical, clinical, educational and business settings.Münsterberg encountered immense turmoil with the outbreak of the First World War. There are different types of memory, which in a very crude and superficial classification might be grouped as visual, acoustical, and motor types. The earnestness with which caution is urged is decidedly different at different periods; the danger of accepting confessions seems to have been felt more strongly at [p. 144] some times than at others. Münsterberg encountered immense turmoil with the outbreak of the First World War. Yet the theoretical question may perhaps demand no later than to-morrow a practical answer, when perhaps again a weak mind shall work itself into an untrue confession and the community again rely thereon satisfied, hypnotised by the spell of the dangerous belief that "murder will out." The last pair has, of course, the advantage in that it sticks to the mind from its position at the end; it remains the most recent, which is not inhibited by any following pair. They may and must be corrected by further experiments, but they are raised from the first above the level of the chance opinions of the lawyer-psychologist. He feels the duty of putting his best will into the effort to reproduce the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In reality the number of types is much larger. Has the court sufficient means at hand to convince the jury that it must weigh all the evidence with a fair consideration of these not pathological, yet very influential, mental variations? There can, indeed, hardly be a doubt that in some instances the confessing persons really believed themselves "guilty." But above all, the psychical state of the defendant himself during the trial is usually measured by the crudest standards of easy-going psychology which considers a mental life as typical and unaltered as long as the man is neither insane nor [p. 151] intoxicated. Prince has recently analysed and described. To prove, in answer to a direct question, that they had been there at night, I told that I had found drops of candle wax on the second floor. Someone told me afterward who the man was; but I had not seen him at all and I don't recall seeing any other men even until after I had seen the revolver. In 1908 he published On the Witness Stand, which was influential to the development of forensic psychology. Persons who perhaps doubt in the reality of the enter world may be found in the asylums and on the philosophic platform; whether the doubting mind is a patient or a philosopher shows itself quickly in the consequences: the philosopher includes that doubt within an harmonious life plan, the patient's life is destroyed by his insane doubt. Hugo Münsterberg (/ ˈ m ʊ n s t ər b ɜːr ɡ /; June 1, 1863 – December 16, 1916) was a German-American psychologist.He was one of the pioneers in applied psychology, extending his research and theories to industrial/organizational (I/O), legal, medical, clinical, educational and business settings. We may move for a long while still in the realm of the normal. The mental status of the witnesses finds usually much less subtle analysis: the cross-examining lawyers turn their attention mostly backwards to the time of the crime and overlook too often the mental state at the time of the trial. The smallest number of mistakes gave twenty-six per cent. Haywood is to be settled in Boise, Idaho by the verdict of a jury, after the jury has heard, and soberly considered all the evidence in the case. It not only suppresses the intentional lie, but it focusses the attention on the details of the statement. Hugo Munsterberg's Psychology and Law: A Historical and Contemporary Assessment: Bornstein, Neuschatz: Amazon.com.au: Books When I saw that they had treated me mildly, inasmuch as they had started in the wine cellar and had forgotten under its genial influence, on the whole, what they had come for, I had taken only a superficial survey. But besides the omissions there were only six among the forty which did not contain positively wrong statements; in twenty-four papers up to ten per cent, of the statements were free inventions, [p. 53] and in ten answers -- hat is, in one-fourth of the papers, -- more than ten per cent. [p. 47] The administration of an oath is partly responsible for the wrong valuation of the evidence. It was the case of a young woman who, from a most distressed, restless and suffering state, was suddenly completely changed to a state of joyful excitement and happy ecstasy. Inasmuch as he expects to spend the next twelve years at a place of residence where he will have little chance to read my writings, I may confess frankly that I liked the man. Münsterberg's legacy: ... participants were highly trained, careful observers whose attention was concentrated on the material (Mu¨nsterberg, 1908, cited by Dolyle, ... ARCHIVAL AND FIELD STUDIES Archival studies typically rely on police files of cases that have been prosecuted. The [p. 60] real present occurrence completely transforms the reminiscences of the past prophecy and every happening is apperceived with the illusory overtone of having been foreseen. The grown-up students of my laboratory commit this kind of perjury all the time. Even unusual varieties may remain still fully within the limit of soundness. On the Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and Crime. For the other type it would depend upon the [p. 56] congruity of an image with other previously accepted images; that is, on the absence of conflicts, when the experience judged about is imagined as part of a wide setting of past experiences. It is the same way in which common-sense [p. 66] tells a man what kind of diet is most nourishing. A striking illustration is well known to those who have ever taken the trouble to approach the depressing literature of modern mysticism. Every lawyer knows the famous Boom case in Vermont, where the brothers confessed to having killed their brother-in-law and described the deed in full detail and how they destroyed the body; while long afterwards the "murdered" man returned alive to the village. The self-sacrificing desire to exculpate others has played its rôle occasionally also. Münsterberg’s interest in the credibility of eyewitness testimony arose from being called on as a scientific expert in two murder cases. The more the scientific analysis and explanation of mental life makes progress through the experimental and physiological, comparative and clinical methods, the more we learn how subtle the Internal connections are and how insufficient the popular psychology must [p. 139] be with which the facts of life are usually interpreted by detectives and attorneys, by juries and judges. The so-called "confessions" themselves seemed absurd and contradictory and exactly like the involuntary elaboration of a suggestion put into the man's mind. Is it so sure that our memory works faultlessly simply because we earnestly want it to behave well? In short, we never know from the material itself whether we remember, perceive, or imagine, and in the borderland regions there must result plenty of confusion which cannot always remain without dangerous consequences in the court-room. That a clock was lying on the table, packed ready to be taken away, had impressed itself clearly on my memory; but that it was packed in a tablecloth had made evidently too slight an impression on my consciousness. Of course in a criminal procedure there cannot be any better evidence than a confession, provided that it is reliable and well proved. It leads through all the affective states of the neurasthenic and other neurotic varieties. IT is a sad story which I am going to report, a weird tragedy of yesterday. Wigmore, J H, "Professor Muensterberg and the Psychology of Testimony being a Report of the Case of Cokestone v Muensterberg" (1909) 3 Illinois LR 399 Wigmore, J H, Evidence in Trials at Common Law (rev by James H Chadbourn (1961- 1972) [cover title Wigmore on Evidence] I could not help becoming convinced that all the external signs spoke against the interpretation of the jury. In 1908 he published On the Witness Stand, which was influential to the development of forensic psychology. The motionless brooding of the melancholic patient is easily recognised, and yet the pessimistic temperament of many a normal man or woman generates all the features which are so sadly developed [p. 153] in the melancholic attacks. But one pair, perhaps the third, is repeated as the seventh, and thus impresses itself by its frequency; another pair, perhaps the fifth, comes with impressive vividness, [p. 67] from the fact that instead of two digits, suddenly three are used. 1 Selling the Psychological Detective Hugo Münsterberg’s Applied Psychology and The Achievements of Luther Trant, 1907–30 In his 1908 collection of essays, On the Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and Crime,Hugo Münsterberg expounds upon one of the principles that … Hugo Münsterberg (1908/1925) UNTRUE CONFESSIONS. [p. 165] Suddenly he began to confess, and he was quite willing to repeat his confession again and again. As mistakes there were counted the omissions, the wrong additions and the alterations. And as the symptoms of melancholia and other depressive states with self-accusatory ideas are easily recognised, there remains hardly any reason for fearing lest such irresponsible fabrications of a diseased brain be taken as real confessions of an actual criminal. The observation itself may be defective and illusory; wrong associations [p. 57] may make it imperfect; judgments may misinterpret the experience; and suggestive influences may falsify the data of the senses. [p. 161] We must not forget, moreover, that our knowledge of our own personality and its doing is also only a function of memory. My memory serves me therefore rather generously. In other words, there cannot be any doubt that the reports of such prophecies which are communicated after having been realised are falsified. Mental diseases are like caricatures of a person; in the caricature too every part of the face is the same as in the ordinary physiognomy, but the proportion is lost, as one special part, perhaps the nose or the teeth are grotesquely enlarged. I added at once, "It is an interesting case of dissociation and auto-suggestion; it would need probably careful treatment to build up his dissociated mind again and thus to awake in him a clear memory of his real experiences.". On this basis he was condemned to death. To be sure, they all respect the physician who examines whether the criminal was insane or mentally disordered. As was to be expected, the judgment as to the time duration of the act varied between a few seconds and several minutes. Not only the self-made psychology of the average juryman, but also the scanty psychological statements which judge and attorney find in the large compendiums on Evidence [sic] fall to pieces if a careful examination approaches the mental facts. His most pronounced defect seemed to them his lack of initiative. Instead of a sound fatigue, there may be an over-fatigue; instead of light emotional excitement, the deep affectional influence of alcohol or drugs; instead of the mild suggestive influence of the teacher and minister, the deep intrusion of the hypnotising physician or of autohypnotisation. Our mind has to sift and sift. The fact is, they had caught the gentleman in question when he, a few days later, plundered another house. The psychologist feels no difficulty in explaining it, but it ought to stand as a great warning signal before the minds of those who believe that the feeling of certainty in recollection secures objective truth. I say that no field shows such a variety in normal limits as the memory, and this refers to its positive features as much as to its negative ones, as much to the remembering as to the forgetting. There is no mental trait which belongs [p. 152] to mental diseases only; whatever we find in the asylums is made up of the same material that enters into the normal interplay of human minds. But modern psychology recognises daily more strongly that the subtlest analysis of the occurrences in the borderland field is absolutely necessary if the higher ends of social justice to be reached. No railroad or ship company would appoint to a responsible post in its service men whose eyesight had not been tested for colour blindness. In some cases it was shown that the mistakes made after a week were hardly more frequent more than those made after a day. The nearest relatives urged the unfortunate accused women to such confessions, seeing no other way of escape for them. 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