Editorial: Evaluative complexities in forensic psychology: methodological and ethical considerations
Year: 2026
Type: editorial
Abstract: Forensic psychology and forensic psychiatry stand at a difficult threshold: they translate mental 14 states, behavior, memory, risk, and vulnerability into assessments that can shape liberty, 15 protection, clinical care, and public trust in justice. This Research Topic was built around a premise 16 that is at once methodological and ethical: evaluative complexity is not a peripheral inconvenience 17 but the object of the field. Uncertainty, disagreement, contextual vulnerability, and measurement 18 limits must be identified, documented, and managed rather than obscured. 19The 12 contributions collected here address the three aims of the Topic -offender treatment and 20 correctional evaluation, variability and objectivity in medico-legal and psycho-criminological 21 assessment, and testimonial capacity -while widening them to courtroom evidence, correctional 22 mental health, biometric decision support, abusive group dynamics, and psychotherapeutic 23 confidentiality. Across these areas, legal categories are indispensable but never self-validating. 24They must be translated into psychological questions, examined with appropriate methods, and 25 returned to legal decision-makers with their scope and limits intact. 26At the epistemological core of the collection, Verde and Gritti reconceptualize forensic 28 psychological assessment as a multilevel abductive process in which idiographic case formulation 29 must be anchored to nomothetic data and protected from confirmation bias, first-impression 30 effects, and self-presentation distortions. Their contribution is complemented by Duggan and 31 Sarkar, who examine the courtroom difficulty of applying group evidence to an individual person. 32Together, these articles argue that expert opinion gains authority not by suppressing uncertainty, 33 but by making its assumptions, inferential steps, and limits explicit. This is especially important in 34 adversarial settings, where confidence can be mistaken for validity and where a transparent 35 account of uncertainty may be more helpful to justice than an overprecise conclusion. 36A second cluster concerns testimony, memory, and evidentiary reasoning. handle high-stakes evidence, and procedures that make case formulation auditable. In that 99 integration lies the credibility of forensic psychology and psychiatry as sciences of evaluation and 100 as practices of justice. 101
Source: Frontiers in Psychology
Authors: Guido Travaini, Monia Vagni, Martino Ongis
Institutions: Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, University of Perugia
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,801
OpenAlex ID: W7204231186