Miko M. Wilford Ph.D.

Miko M. Wilford, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Iowa State University. She conducts research aimed at improving real world policies and procedures, particularly in legal and educational domains. More specifically, her work seeks to answer questions such as: Why do innocent people plead guilty to crimes they did not commit? How can we preserve eyewitnesses’ memories? What impacts students’ perceptions of learning? Etc. Her work addressing these questions has been published in a number of high-impact, peer-reviewed journals including Law and Human Behavior, Psychological Science, Psychology, Public Policy and Law, and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. Her body of research also earned her recognition as an Association for Psychological Science Rising Star in 2020.

Much of her recent work has been particularly focused on illuminating issues with today’s criminal justice system, particularly its shift away from trials in favor of plea bargaining. She received a National Science Foundation CAREER grant to complete a multi-phase project that aims to further examine the factors that lead both adult and juvenile defendants to accept plea offers, especially when they are actually innocent. This grant also allowed Wilford to further improve a computer simulation of legal procedures that can be used for both research and education purposes. These improvements included the creation of a researcher console designed to allow any interested scholar modify their own version of this computer simulation to investigate their own research questions (see PleaJustice page).

Wilford earned her doctoral degree at Iowa State University under the advisement of Gary L. Wells, Ph.D. (in the Social Psychology program) and Jason C. K. Chan, Ph.D. (in the Cognitive Psychology program), with the support of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.