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Description: Humans are prone to biases that influence decision-making, some of which are conscious and others which are unconscious. Kahneman (2011) identified a range of human biases, both explicit and implicit. Biases are influenced by a person’s background, social, political, and cultural environment and personal experiences. Often people are unaware of their biases, how they develop or the impact on their everyday thinking, feelings and behaviour. Whilst bias has an adaptive function in terms of reducing the workload of the brain, these cognitive short-cuts can also have a negative impact on the accuracy of decision-making, particularly when we are unaware of their existence and their role. Research has explored the role of bias in forensic decision making and risk assessment, including the decision making of jurors (Kleider, Knuycky & Cavrak (2012) sentencers (Goodman-Delahunty & Sporer, 2010) and parole boards (Forde, 2014). Those with professional knowledge, skills, and experience are often called upon to offer their ‘expert opinion in a range of legal and quasi-legal settings. These opinions have the potential to be influential in such situations. Research has identified that experts are not immune to biases. For example; Dror and Rosenthal (2008) undertook a meta-analysis exploring the reliability of experts and the presence of bias, undertaking within-expert comparisons of fingerprint analysis. They concluded that experts are not completely reliable, with evidence of them being biased by additional contextual information. In the field of psychology, experts are required to provide their psychological opinion in an objective and unbiased way. Research has identified a number of biases present in forensic psychological assessments (Williams (1992), Ludici, Salvini, Faccio, and Castelnuovo (2015), Richards, Geiger, and Tussey, 2015)) as well as how this can lead to errors (Lockhart and Satya-Murti, 2017). Others (for example; Neal and Brodsky, 2016) have explored the extent to which experts are aware of their potential to be biased, finding evidence of a bias ‘blind spot’. This research has been used to explore de-biasing techniques (Williams, 1992). The aim of this review is to examine the existing empirical literature to identify the main types of bias in professionals who conduct forensic psychological and psychiatric assessments and the impact of these on assessments.

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