The psychology-law concentration includes a distinguished group of faculty with research interests in criminal confessions, deception detection, eyewitness identification, forensic science, memory, and police interviewing and interrogation. The group comprise of faculty members from cognitive psychology (Dr. Jason Chan, Dr. Chris Meissner, Dr. Andrew Smith) and social psychology (Dr. Zlatan Krizan, Dr. Gary Wells). Applicants interested in working with faculty in the psychology-law concentration should apply to either the Ph.D. program in cognitive psychology or the Ph.D. program in social psychology. The psychology-law concentration is home to the Stavish Fund for Excellence in Psychology and Law that provides scholarships and fellowships to psychology-law graduate students and the Wendy and Mark Stavish Endowed Chair that supports the psychology-law speaker series. The speaker series brings world-renowned scholars to campus several times per year, thereby broadening the experiences of graduate students and faculty in the psychology department. Please visit the psychology admissions page for information about applying to the psychology-law concentration in psychology. For questions, please contact Sarah Kallsen at gradpsychapp@iastate.edu or call 515-294-1742.
Faculty:
Jason C.K. Chan
Professor
False memory and eyewitness memory
Zlatan Krizan
Professor
Sleep and alertness, provision and collection of human intelligence
Christian A. Meissner
Professor
Interrogation, deception, cross-race identification
Andrew Smith
Assistant Professor
Eyewitness and recognition memory, diagnostic accuracy, signal detection theory
Gary Wells
Distinguished Professor
Applied social psychology, judgment and decision making, law and public policy
Post-doc:
Amelia Mindthoff
Ph.D., Florida International University
Evidence-based investigative interviewing; juror perceptions/decision making
Liz Elliott
Ph.D., Ontario Tech
Detecting deception; investigative interviewing
Students:
- 2021-2022: Stavish Graduate Award to Rachel O’Donnell
- 2021-2022: Stavish Graduate Fellowship to Nydia Ayala and Alex Goldstein
- 2020-2021: Stavish Graduate Awards to Nydia Ayala and Rachel O’Donnell
Career Placement of Recent Graduates:
- Ryan Ditchfield (2021, Ph.D.) – Assistant professor at California State Fresno
- Rachel Dianiska (2020, Ph.D.) – Postdoctoral fellow at University of California Irvine
- Krista Manley (2019, Ph.D.) -User experience researcher at Procore
- Dominick Atkinson (2019, Ph.D.) – Postdoctoral fellow at University of Idaho
- Sara Davis (2018, Ph.D.) – Assistant professor at University of North Florida