Forensics Colleges & Universities

Whether going out on a date, traveling through a foreign country, or interrogating a suspect in a crime, forensic psychology offers a wealth of tools to help decode people’s nonverbal behavior. These cues include gestures, vocal tones, body positioning, micro-expressions of the face, and a number of often subconscious indicators of people’s internal states.

A criminalist collects, documents, preserves, and examines the physical evidence at a crime scene, which could be something as huge as a bus, or as tiny as a pollen grain; criminologists, on the other hand, study why crimes occur, how they can be prevented, and the effects they have on a society.

True crime books have been pulling readers in for decades, and the reasons go deeper than simple fascination with the grotesque. Psychologists who study the genre point to the same appeal that draws people to mystery fiction: the drive to understand motive, to impose order on chaos, and to ask how a person gets here.