Geoffrey Beattie

Who is Geoffrey Beattie?

Geoff Beattie is an academic psychologist, writer and broadcaster. He is Professor of Psychology at Edge Hill University. He was Visiting Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2012.

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 ’, ‘The Psychology of Language and Communication’, and ‘Visible Thought: The New Psychology of Body Language’. 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 is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and was awarded the Spearman Medal by the BPS for 'published psychological research of outstanding merit'. He was also President of the Psychology section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 2005 to 2006. 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.