Witness – Psychology Today: Analyzing the analyzers
. . . There will always be the next rare event to fuel a cycle of knee-jerk response, ostensibly aimed at protecting us from every remote contingency.
Hindsight bias is a powerful heuristic that obscures an unfortunate truth: It is very hard to accurately predict — much less prevent — individual-level violence. Many people — and especially many adolescent and young adult men — are troubled. Many are severely depressed. Many express disturbing, violent fantasies. Fortunately, only a tiny fraction commit lethal acts against others. And unfortunately, those who do often do not stand out ahead of time.
This is what forensic psychologist Robert Fein found when he conducted a Secret Service study of all political assassins and would-be assassins in the United States over the past 60 years. Contrary to popular mythology, the assassins fit no singular “profile.” They were neither monsters nor martyrs.
Psychology Today
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Recent & Upcoming
Peer consultant
Dr. Franklin is excited to join the multidisciplinary Pacific Forensic Group as a peer consultant.
Podcast interview
Dr. Franklin converses with Laverne Cox about violence against transgender people.
Book chapter
Forensic Psychology in Military Courts, edited by U.S. Air Force Major Christopher Stein and forensic psychologist Jeffrey Younggren, includes a chapter by Dr. Franklin on psychological evaluations in military courts-martial.
NPR radio interview
Dr. Franklin discusses the career of forensic psychology with job coach Marty Nemko on NPR. Listen online or download the podcast HERE.
Career interview
An in-depth interview about Dr. Franklin’s career by psychologist David Webb is online at “All About Forensic Science.”
Training feedback
Participant evaluations of professional trainings has been updated with attorney feedback from a recent training for the Santa Clara County Superior Court on evaluating juvenile competency.
Book review
A review of the first-ever textbook on multiple-perpetrator rape, which includes a chapter by Dr. Franklin, has been published by the European journal Sexologies.
Profiled
Dr. Franklin was profiled in a high school forensic science textbook.