Geoffrey Beattie

Geoff Beattie is an academic psychologist, writer and broadcaster. He is Professor of Psychology at Edge Hill University and a Masters supervisor on the Sustainability Leadership Programme at the University of Cambridge. He was Professor of Psychology at the University of Manchester from 1994 until 2012, Head of the Department of Psychology from 2000 to 2004 and Head of the School of Psychological Sciences from 2004 to 2011. He was also a Professorial Research Fellow in the Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) at the University from 2008 to 2012 and Visiting Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2012.[1]

He is best known for his detailed analyses of nonverbal communication which has featured in a large number of academic articles and books including ‘Talk: An Analysis of Speech and Non-Verbal Behaviour in Conversation ’ (Open University Press), ‘The Psychology of Language and Communication’ (Psychology Press), and ‘Visible Thought: The New Psychology of Body Language’ (Routledge). He has shown that some nonverbal communication, particularly the movements of the hands whilst talking, reflects unarticulated aspects of thinking and therefore we can potentially ‘read’ hidden thoughts by paying close attention to these movements. He describes this research in his book 'Rethinking Body Language: How Hand Movements Reveal Hidden Thoughts'. (Routledge).

He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and was awarded the Spearman Medal by the BPS for 'published psychological research of outstanding merit'. In 2010, with a number of colleagues, he was awarded the internationally acclaimed Mouton d’Or for the best paper in the leading semiotics journal Semiotica for research on the effects of deception on gesture production. In 2016 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine.

He has always been keen to show the relevance of psychology to society in general and in 2005/2006 he was President of the Psychology Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He has given numerous keynote addresses at both academic and non-academic international conferences which have involved commercial organisations including Unilever, P&G, ITV, HSBC, Tesco, the Marketing Forum and many others. He has also carried out extensive media work on behalf of a wide range of organisations.

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