A brief history of the psychology of testimony

Abstract

The historiography of psychology has largely ignored the history of applied aspects of its field. Moreover, contemporary legal psychologists have often overlooked previous related work. The present paper attempts partially to fill these gaps by providing a brief description of the history of the psychology of testimony at the beginning of this century, particularly in central Europe. It is argued that in central Europe, in contrast to the United States and Britain, there existed a pervasive experimental psychology of testimony. This movement probably originated with Binet in France and Stern in Germany. However, it was especially the latter and his followers who succeeded in institutionalizing a ‘Psychologie der Aussage’ that was widely discussed in legal circles at that time. Although the early studies have often been criticized for their methodological flaws and their negativistic one-sidedness the European movement did have some belated impact in that expert psychological testimony slowly started to be admitted before courts of law. It is of special interest to the contemporary researcher that many of the critical issues raised by early legal scholars were quite sophisticated and remain as pertinent as ever to the experimental study of testimony.