Steve Penrod is a distinguished professor of

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

at the

John Jay College of Criminal Justice The John Jay College of Criminal Justice (John Jay) is a public college focused on criminal justice and located in New York City. It is a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY). John Jay was founded as the only liberal arts c ...

. His education and career have led him to become an expert in the areas of psychology and law. He has contributed heavily to the field of psychology in the area of

eyewitness memory Eyewitness memory is a person's episodic memory for a crime or other dramatic event that he or she has witnessed. Eyewitness testimony is often relied upon in the judicial system. It can also refer to an individual's memory for a face, where they a ...

, specifically the accuracy of

eyewitness identification In eyewitness identification, in criminal law, evidence is received from a witness "who has actually seen an event and can so testify in court". The Innocence Project states that "Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wron ...

Biography

Education

Penrod received his B.A. in political science at

Yale College Yale College is the undergraduate college of Yale University. Founded in 1701, it is the original school of the university. Although other Yale schools were founded as early as 1810, all of Yale was officially known as Yale College until 1887, ...

in 1969, where he was involved with the Yale Political Union. Penrod studied at

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

and received his J.D. in 1974. In 1979, he received a Ph.D. in

Social Psychology Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...

from Harvard. His dissertation was titled, ''Evaluation of social scientific and traditional attorney methods of

jury selection Jury selection is the selection of the people who will serve on a jury during a jury trial. The group of potential jurors (the "jury pool", also known as the ''venire'') is first selected from among the community using a reasonably random method. ...

.''

Professional experience

From 1971 to 1973, Penrod worked as a Legal Officer in the Judge Advocate General's Corps, U.S. Navy. In 1979, he became a professor of psychology at the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

. In 1989, Penrod became a professor of law and an

adjunct professor An adjunct professor is a type of academic appointment in higher education who does not work at the establishment full-time. The terms of this appointment and the job security of the tenure vary in different parts of the world, however the genera ...

of psychology at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

. In 1995 Penrod moved to the

University of Nebraska at Lincoln A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

, where he was a professor of psychology and law and the program director for the law and psychology programs. In 2001 Penrod became a distinguished professor of psychology at John Jay.

Honors and awards

Yale College

Pi Sigma Alpha Pi Sigma Alpha ( or PSA), the National Political Science Honor Society, is the only honor society for college and university students of political and social sciences in the United States. Its purpose is to recognize and promote high academic ...

Political Science Honor Society *National Science Foundation Summer Research Grant *Griffin Scholarship *Alcoa Scholarship

Harvard Law School

*Taft Scholarship

Harvard University

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

Dissertation *Research Grand Law and Social Sciences

Post-educational

*1980 — Co-winner of Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues *1980 —

Society for Experimental Social Psychology The Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) is a scientific organization of social scientists founded in 1965 with the goal of advancing and communicating theories in social psychology. Its first chairperson was Edwin P. Hollander.Hollande ...

Dissertation Award. *1980 — Cattell Dissertation Award, New York Academy of Sciences *1981 — Second Prize

American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...

Division 13 Meltzer Research Award *1986 —

Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Applied Psychology (Citation:

American Psychologist ''American Psychologist'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Psychological Association. The journal publishes articles of broad interest to psychologists, including empirical reports and scholarly reviews covering science ...

, 42, 300–303). *1994-1995 — Davis Professorship in Law, University of Minnesota *1999-2000 — Gallup Professorship — University of Nebraska *1999 — Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology and the Law —

American Psychology–Law Society The American Psychology–Law Society (AP–LS) is an academic society for legal and forensic psychologists, as well as general psychologists who are interested in the application of psychology to the law. AP–LS serves as Division 41 of the Amer ...

*2001 — Distinguished Professorship, John Jay College, CUNY

Work and studies

Most of Penrod's work has dealt with eyewitness studies. In one of his most commonly cited articles (according to Harzing), "Eyewitness Identification Procedures: Recommendations for Lineups and Photospreads," he discusses the topic of eyewitness identification and recommends different techniques to help lower the chances of

false identification Identity document forgery is the process by which identity documents issued by governing bodies are copied and/or modified by persons not authorized to create such documents or engage in such modifications, for the purpose of deceiving those ...

. Examples of these include double-blind lineups, informing witnesses that the suspect may not even be present in the lineup, and choosing distractors carefully based on the witness's verbal description. Another Penrod study, "

Meta-analysis A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting me ...

of facial identification studies" focuses on discovering what variables influence facial identification performance and what aspects of this topic should be further studied. Some variables that were found to affect performance were

context Context may refer to: * Context (language use), the relevant constraints of the communicative situation that influence language use, language variation, and discourse summary Computing * Context (computing), the virtual environment required to su ...

reinstatement, target distinctiveness, elaboration at encoding, exposure time, cross-racial identification, and retention interval. Penrod also did a study, "Choosing, confidence, and accuracy: A meta-analysis of the confidence-accuracy relation in eyewitness identification studies," which deals with confidence of eyewitnesses. This study sought to discover the strength of

correlation In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistics ...

between confidence and accuracy for eyewitness identifying a

suspect In law enforcement jargon, a suspect is a known person accused or suspected of committing a crime. Police and reporters in the United States often use the word suspect as a jargon when referring to the perpetrator of the offense (perp in dated U ...

. It found that those who identified the correct suspect tended to have higher confidence levels than those who were incorrect.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Penrod, Steve 21st-century American psychologists Living people Harvard Law School alumni John Jay College of Criminal Justice faculty University of Nebraska faculty Yale College alumni Year of birth missing (living people)