Her work is driven by a belief that psychological science can bring much-needed clarity to the justice system.
“Most prosecutors will tell you they prosecute guilty people. Most judges believe they sentence guilty people. But many defense attorneys will say they’ve seen truly innocent people go to prison,” she says. “It’s human nature to see only your side of the coin. That’s why psychology is so important—it helps us step back and analyze the entire system using data, not just instinct or tradition.”
When an innocent person pleads guilty, Wilford points out, the system fails twice. “Not only is an innocent person punished,” she says, “but the real perpetrator remains free—possibly to commit more crimes and harm more people.”
Her research seeks to understand how legal actors, often acting with the best of intentions, might unknowingly contribute to these outcomes—and how psychological insight can prevent them.
The implications are far-reaching: more than 90% of criminal convictions in the U.S. come from guilty pleas. Yet the psychology behind these decisions—how people weigh risk, fairness, and fear—hasn’t always been easy to study.
For years, researchers relied on what Wilford calls “vignette studies”—participants would read a brief story about a hypothetical crime and say what they might do. But something was missing. “You don’t get the emotion,” she says. “You don’t get the weight of that decision.”
So she did something new.
Earlier in her career at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, with grant funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Wilford brought together a team of psychology and design students, along with computer scientists to create an interactive, video game–style simulation of the plea process. Participants are placed in a digital scenario where they commit—or don’t commit—a crime, get accused, and face the decision to accept a plea or go to trial.
“It’s immersive, but still ethical,” Wilford says. “We can’t put people in a real-life situation where they think they’re facing prison. But we can make experiments engaging enough that they care about what happens.”
The resulting tool was released under a Creative Commons license at pleajustice.org, and has been used by researchers and educators around the world.
Since joining the Iowa State Department of Psychology in 2023, Wilford is taking things even further by collaborating with the university’s Virtual Reality Applications Center to bring the study of plea decisions into fully immersive environments. She’s glad to return to Iowa State where she once double majored in psychology and political science as an undergraduate and went on to eventually earn her Ph.D.
It’s a full-circle moment for Wilford, who began her plea research during graduate school at Iowa State, where she was studying eyewitness memory under associate professor Jason Chan and emeritus professor Gary Wells.
“Their work fascinated me, but I guess I got a little restless,” she laughs. “I started thinking—what else could I do in this space? And now I am here again, but in new ways, with new collaborators and students.”
Wilford’s professional curiosity and accomplishments have since earned her national recognition. In 2024, she received the Saleem Shah Early Career Award from the American Psychology–Law Society. The award – presented by the society’s president, and now Iowa State colleague, Christian Meissner – recognizes early career excellence and contributions to the field of psychology and law. The focus on the nominee’s contributions may be in any area of forensic practice, research or public policy.
“It’s a nice ribbon to put on this relatively new area of research,” says Wilford. “It is such an honor to be recognized by others who share my particular passion and interest for applying psychological science.”
By Susan McNicholl, Iowa State University Office of the Vice President for Research
