Legal Decision Making Research Lab
We are accepting applications for the PhD Program in Psychology and Law at UNL for Fall, 2025
Welcome to the Legal Decision Making Lab (LDML) at University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL)! LDML is a lab in the Department of Psychology and affiliated with the Law College at UNL focused on investigating factors that influence the decisions of citizens, workers, jurors, lawyers, judges, policy makers and others in various legal contexts. In particular, our research examines impacts of law and policy on human judgment and decision making from a social cognitive perspective.
Mission: We use psychological and other social science approaches to understand how the law influences human judgments and decision making and how human judgment and decision making influences the making of law, the execution of law, and the use of law in the courts and other adjudicative bodies.
Legal Decision Making Lab members engage in:
- basic research focusing on the role of cognition, motivation, and emotion in shaping legal decisions in the legislative and adjudicative processes.
- applied research focusing on how government and other social agencies administer the law to resolve conflicts.
- program evaluation studies of the effectiveness of local and state agency programs in areas as diverse as police education, immigration court, bail setting, sex trafficking, human service interventions, probation, and parole.
- trial consulting collaboration with trial consulting firms to use social science to assist plaintiff council, defense counsel, and state prosecutors to represent their clients to the best of their ability.
All psychology graduate students in the lab are joint JD/PhD students, MLS/PhD students, or PhD students with an interest or background in law.
Interested in Undergraduate Research Experience?
Research Assistant Opportunity in Legal Decision Making Lab!
Dr. Richard Wiener and his team of graduate students in UNL’s nationally renowned law and psychology program would like to announce an opportunity to join our busy and productive lab as a research assistant. By conducting cutting edge field research and in-lab experiments, our lab applies psychology topics to legal fields including criminal justice policy, workplace and housing discrimination, and sexual harassment lawsuits. If you are interested in applying what you learn in your psychology classes to real-world legal topics, Dr. Wiener’s lab offers an excellent opportunity to explore the field of psychology and law.
Details of the Research Assistant Position: Our research assistants attend meetings to discuss research projects and studies, assist with data collection, manage in-lab experiments, and learn how to enter and analyze data using statistical packages.
Who can apply: Anyone! From new Freshman to experienced Seniors and everyone in between – we accept applications from anyone interested in psychology and law!
Why should you apply? There are many benefits to joining a research lab as an undergraduate research assistant. We encourage our research assistants to take course credit for hours they spend in the lab (although we take volunteers too!), and working for an active lab looks great on a resume. Research assistants have also applied what they learned in our lab to thesis projects, and presented research at conferences. For students who are considering graduate school or research jobs, the experience and letters of reference you gain in our lab can be invaluable to earning future opportunities. Even if you are unsure about what you want to do, working with our lab provides a great learning experience!
Fill out the application here and upload a resume or CV to the webform! We hope to hear from you soon and look forward to getting to know you!
