Carolyn Semmler

I'm an Associate Professor with the School of Psychology at the University of Adelaide. My research applies psychological theory (cognitive and social) to the law, Defence and health. In particular I'm interested in the problem of how to obtain and use information reported by witnesses' to crime to make decisions about the likelihood that a given suspect is the offender to prevent wrongful convictions. I'm also interested in using psychological principles to improve the accuracy and efficiency of decisions made by our courts. I have research (funded by the Australian Research Council, the National Science Foundation (USA) and other government and non-government bodies) on-going that looks into the psychological factors that impact on identity-based decision making. This research has focussed on how individuals experienced in the processing of facial imagery make identity decisions, as well as the impact of technology on decision making. Other research interests include the impact of direct-to-consumer marketing on health decision making and education about pharmaceutical promotion for medical students, jurors emotion and processing of evidence and the comprehension of jury instructions.

I lecture at the University of Adelaide in statistics, cognition (decision making) and research methods.