I am interested in pursuing psychological profiling, a combination of psychology and law and criminal justice, for my senior project. First, I will refresh my understanding of what I already know about psychological profiling and the process of creating a profile. Then, I’ll identify 2-3 different cases that stand out to me based on the details of the case, how the profile was made, and the outcome of the case. I will study each case in-depth and to do this, I will watch documentaries, read news articles about the case, read articles, and more. My plan for the next stage is to engage others and get their initial ideas on the cases I’ve studied. I would like to engage different groups of people like students, parents, teachers, lawyers, police officers, etc. This second part of the stage in other words is to get other people’s reactions about the cases and having them think critically about the steps the profilers took. For example, I plan to look at one case in which the profiler was too quick to suspect someone and didn’t have substantial evidence against them. And finally, I want to study the dangers of psychological profiling, investigate how profilers can avoid making mistakes in their profile, and have a check on them so that their mistakes don’t lead to an innocent arrest.

Essential questions:

1. What makes a successful profile?
2. What makes a successful application of a profile?
3. What are the dangers of an unsuccessful profile and application of it?

These essential questions will allow me to dig down further into what I already know about psychological profiling and be able to apply my knowledge to certain cases.

Feasibility:

I think that my plan is feasible because it can be done pretty much anywhere like at home or at school. The articles and other such resources I will access with the help of my old teacher who taught psychological profiling to me over the summer. For the second stage of my plan, I will need access to various groups of people. I can send out surveys to the school and faculty to engage their opinions and contact others outside of the school I know to participate too. So far, I can’t think of anything I might need from the school right now but I will update this if I do.

You may find my senior project presentation here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13ICSJtKWIFh11iyd6JQxsOrhF-I4RT4IJu5lDCnAWyQ/edit#slide=id.gae696af7b7_0_5