Biography
Dr. Rachel Leigh Greenspan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Central Florida. She earned her Ph.D. in Psychology and Social Behavior from the University of California, Irvine, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. Her research takes an applied, interdisciplinary, and multi-method approach to studying questions at the intersection of psychology, criminal justice, and the law. Her main research interests focus on the development and downstream consequences of memory errors, particularly in the criminal legal system. Her current work examines how artificial intelligence is increasingly supplementing or replacing human memory in applied contexts, exploring questions about the use of AI-generated faces in police lineups and the accuracy of facial recognition technologies. She also investigates issues in research methodology, including how social scientists design, conduct, and report upon the results of their research.
Dr. Greenspan is accepting applications for doctoral students for the Human Factors and Cognitive Psychology Ph.D. Program at UCF for Fall 2026. If you are interested in applying to work with Dr. Greenspan, please email her.
Recent Publications
Greenspan, R.L., & Bergold, A. N. (2025). Can AI-generated faces serve as fillers in an eyewitness lineup? Memory, 33(4), 416-429. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2025.2467134
Greenspan, R. L. (2025). Artificial intelligence policies in higher education: A randomized field experiment. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/10511253.2025.2449603
Greenspan, R. L., Baggett, L.*, & Boutwell, B. (2024). Open science practices in criminology and criminal justice journals. Journal of Experimental Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-024-09640-x
Greenspan, R. L., Quigley-McBride, A., Bluestine, M., & Garrett, B. (2024). Psychological science from research to policy: Eyewitness identifications in Pennsylvania police agencies. Psychology, Public Policy, & Law. 30(4), 462-478. https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000429
Greenspan, R. L., Lyman, A., & Heaton, P. (2024). Assessing verbal eyewitness confidence statements using natural language processing. Psychological Science, 35(3), 277-287. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976241229028