Geoffrey Beattie

Geoff Beattie is an academic psychologist, writer and broadcaster. He is Professor of Psychology at Edge Hill University. 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.

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),^[1] ‘The Psychology of Language and Communication’ (Psychology Press),^[2] and ‘Visible Thought: The New Psychology of Body Language’ (Routledge).^[3] 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).^[4]

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'.^[5] In 2010, with a number of colleagues, he was awarded the internationally acclaimed Mouton d’Or ^[6] for the best paper in the leading semiotics journal Semiotica ^[7] for research on the effects of deception on gesture production.^[8] 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.

He is well known for bringing analyses of behaviour, and particularly nonverbal communication, to a more general audience by appearing as the on-screen psychologist on eleven series of Big Brother^[9] in the U.K. and for explaining how psychology can be used by people in their everyday lives, for example, in Get the Edge: How Simple Changes Will Transform Your Life (Headline).^[10] Translations of this book have now appeared in China, Taiwan and Brazil and his work in psychology has also been extensively covered in the national and international media including ABC News, Russia Today, Good Morning America, BBC Breakfast, Channel 4 News, The Wall Street Journal, The Telegraph and The Mirror amongst many others.

• Geoff Beattie on the body language of Donald Trump during the Presidential debate (Newsweek, 17th October 2016)
• Geoff Beattie on the Live Election Debates 2010 (The Mirror, 23rd April 2010)
• Geoff Beattie on The Perfect Handshake (ABC News)

From the start of his academic career he was interested in exploring psychological issues outside the ivory tower of the university and he wrote extensively about life in the North of England during a previous recession mainly for The Guardian newspaper. He focussed on the lives of unemployed steel workers and miners, the sometimes desperate new entrepreneurs, boxers, doormen, clubbers, ten bob ‘millionaires’ who were really on the dole, masseuses and burglars, those trying to get by day by day in desperate economic times. He was interested in how people survived psychologically when they were thrown onto the scrapheap by a government who did not seem particularly interested in their fate. The Sunday Times described him as ‘a gifted journalist with a genius for making people talk.’ City Life described him as ‘an impressive and eloquent chronicler of the buried underside of British life.’ The Manchester Evening News said that he was ‘slowly establishing himself as one of the most perceptive writers in the country’.

This work resulted in a number of books including ‘Survivors of Steel City’ (Chatto & Windus),^[11] ‘Making It: The Reality of Today’s Entrepreneurs’ (Weidenfeld & Nicolson),^[12] ‘England After Dark’ (Weidenfeld & Nicolson),^[13]‘Hard Lines: Voices from Deep within a Recession’ (Mandolin) ^[14] and ‘On the Ropes: Boxing as a Way of Life’ (Victor Gollancz).^[15] ‘On the Ropes’ was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 1996.^[16] He was also story consultant on an award winning ninety-minute documentary film about Sheffield, entitled 'Tales from a Hard City'.^[17] This documentary film won the Grand Prix at the Marseilles Film Festival and the Best Regional Film in the Indies Awards.^[18]

Early life and education

He was born in Ligoniel in North Belfast. His father Billy was a motor mechanic, his mother Eileen worked in the local mill. After leaving Belfast Royal Academy, he studied psychology at the University of Birmingham graduating with a First Class Honours degree and then did his PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge. The research focus for his Ph.D. was the relationship between thinking and language, but he became particularly interested in nonverbal communication and its connection with language and thought, an interest that has continued to the present. His first academic job was at the University of Sheffield where he was appointed lecturer in social psychology.

North Belfast was an area particularly affected by the Troubles (and often called ‘Murder Triangle’ by the media) and he wrote about his Protestant working-class background in a number of books ‘We Are the People: Journeys through the Heart of Protestant Ulster’ (Heinemann),^[19] ‘Protestant Boy’ (Granta) ^[20] and a novel ‘The Corner Boys’ (Victor Gollancz).^[21] ‘We are The People’ and ‘The Corner Boys’ were both shortlisted for the Ewart-Biggs Literary Prize in 1993 and 1999 respectively.^[22] He also wrote about Northern Ireland and the Troubles for various newspapers and magazines including The Guardian, The Independent and The New Statesman.^[23]

He made a documentary for BBC1 Northern Ireland entitled From the Turn-of-the-Road charting the return to his roots in North Belfast for the documentary series Home Truths.^[24] He also wrote and presented ‘The Ceasefire Generation’ a documentary about eighteen year-olds in Northern Ireland, born after the 1994 ceasefire, broadcast on Radio 4, in September 2012. The Ceasefire Generation, BBC1 Northern Ireland

He has always been a keen sportsman and interested in the psychology behind sport. This resulted in two series for Radio 5 Live and a book ‘Head to Head: Uncovering the Psychology of Sporting Success’ (Victor Gollancz) analyzing the psychology underlying sporting success in interviews with Alex Ferguson, Kelly Holmes, Naseem Hamed, Jonathan Edwards, Chris Boardman and others.^[25]

He also explored the lives of boxers in and out of the ring in two books based around Brendan Ingle’s gym in Sheffield ‘On the Ropes: Boxing as a Way of Life’ (Victor Gollancz) ^[26] and ‘The Shadows of Boxing. Prince Naseem and Those He Left Behind’ (Orion).^[27] He took up boxing to write ‘On the Ropes’, as other more illustrious writers have done in the past. Indeed the first ‘word’ in ‘On the Ropes’ is the noise he made involuntarily when he was punched in the stomach by Mick ‘the Bomb’ Mills.

He has trained daily since he was thirteen (the year his father died). His son Ben could never understand why he had to run with his father as a child. Ben himself is now a dedicated and very successful runner (bordering on elite status) and he understands his father a little better. They explored their relationship and their compulsion to run in ‘Chasing Lost Times: A Father and Son Reconciled Through Running’ (Mainstream).^[28]

Other academic interests

The psychology of sustainable consumption
Since 2007 another main area of academic interest has been the psychology of sustainability and he has been investigating why people are not doing more to safeguard the environment in the light of the threat posed by climate change. The most important thing which emerged from this research was that although people say that they have very positive attitudes towards the environment, measures of implicit attitudes, which are largely unconscious, are not nearly so positive but are better predictors of actual behaviour in many situations (see, for example, ‘Why Aren’t We Saving the Planet? A Psychologist’s Perspective’, Routledge).^[29] People seem to be ‘dissociated’ when it comes to the environment and understanding this state could be crucial to changing their behaviour.

A major part of this research has involved the development and refinement of various implicit measures of attitude including the Implicit Association Test (IAT) ^[30] to measure unconscious attitudes to things like carbon footprint, and eye tracking techniques to measure individual fixation points 25 times per second when consumers look at products, in order to measure core values. This research was funded by Tesco through the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester. One resulting paper 'Explicit and Implicit Attitudes to Low and High Carbon Footprint Products' was shortlisted for the International Award for Excellence by The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability.^[31]

The psychology of unconscious racial prejudice
The interest in sustainability also meant that he became interested in possible ‘dissociation’ in other areas of life and he explored this in the area of unconscious racial prejudice especially in the context of shortlisting for academic posts. Beattie showed that when White people were shortlisting candidates for jobs, they were ten times more likely to select two White candidates than two non-White candidates (despite the White and non-White candidates having identical CVs) and, in addition, using remote eye tracking to monitor their individual gaze fixation points, he found that those doing the shortlisting unconsciously fixated on the weaker parts of the CV of candidates from different racial backgrounds to themselves. One consequence of this selective attention, directed by the unconscious system, is that the final outcome might appear quite reasonable and might well satisfy our conscious and rational self. Beattie has argued that if we really do want to do anything about racism in society, then we need to understand these implicit, unconscious processes and how to combat them. The research is reported in ‘Our Racist Heart? An Exploration of Unconscious Prejudice in Everyday Life’ (Routledge, 2013)^[32] and was funded by Equality and Diversity at the University of Manchester ^[33] and then by the U.K.’s Equality Challenge Unit.^[34]

Media

Television

Resident on-screen psychologist [Big Brother] ([Channel 4]) 2000-2010 focussing mainly on nonverbal communication and patterns of social interaction Big Brother 2007

Co-presenter, Life’s Too Short (BBC1) This series applied psychological insights (including detailed behavioural analyses) to a range of people having trouble in their relationships. BBC1: Life's Too Short episode guide

Presenter, Family SOS (BBC1 Northern Ireland) A detailed look at families currently experiencing a wide range of important but unidentified psychological issues. The analytic focus was again on the behaviour of the family members and how they interacted with each other. The goal was to work out what specifically needed to change to improve the situation. BBC Northern Ireland

Presenter, Dump Your Mates in Four Days (Channel 4) A series aimed at teenagers which allowed teenagers to ‘try out’ different sets of friends in order to teach them something about themselves and their social networks and how things can change. Dump Your Mates in Four Days (Channel 4)

Co-presenter and psychologist, The Farm of Fussy Eaters (UKTV Style) A series focusing on individuals with oddly constrained and unhealthy food choices. His role was to understand where the various attitudes to food came from and how they could be modified. UKTV The Farm of Fussy Eaters

On-screen psychologist, Ghosthunting with.... (ITV2 and ITV1) On-screen psychologist, focusing on the nonverbal behaviour of celebrities in various ‘haunted’ locations. The celebrities have included Girls Aloud, Coronation Street, Emmerdale, McFly, The Happy Mondays, Paul O’Grady and friends, Boyzone, The Saturdays, Katie Price and friends, TOWIE etc. Ghosthunting With....The Saturdays

He has also been a frequent guest on the ITV News (with a slot called ‘The Body Politic’ at one General Election^[35] ), Lorraine Kelly, Richard and Judy, The One Show, Tonight with Trevor McDonald (ITV), with other guest appearances on Child of Our Time, Arena, It’s Only a Theory,^[36] Risky Business, Tomorrow’s World, The Heart of the Matter, Watchdog, BBC Breakfast,^[37] Good Morning America, the Keri-Anne Show (Australia),^[38] TV4 (Sweden), News Asia, The Mindfield, and various documentaries for Channel 4, Channel 5, BBC4 and Sky.

Radio

Numerous radio interviews (including Woman’s Hour Radio 4 ^[39] and Nightwaves Radio 3^[40] ) on such topics as the NHS Choice Campaign, mothers combining child rearing and entrepreneurship, mood and feel good films, flashbulb memories for personal and historical events, and the analysis of fake and genuine smiles. Other radio interviews include 'Science Now' (Radio 4), The Today Programme (Radio 4), All in the Mind (Radio 4), Word of Mouth (Radio 4), Midweek (Radio 4), Parkinson on Sunday (Radio 2), BBC World Service 'World of Books' programme, 'This Week' (RTÉ), The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Freewheeling (Radio 4) and many local radio stations.

Journalism

He has written extensively for The Guardian,^[41] The Observer,^[42] The Observer Magazine,^[43] The Independent ^[44] and The Independent on Sunday.^[45]

Books

• Beattie, G. (2016) Rethinking Body Language: How Hand Movements Reveal Hidden Thoughts. London: Routledge^[46]
• Beattie, G. (2013) Our Racist Heart? An Exploration of Unconscious Prejudice in Everyday Life. London: Routledge^[47]
• Beattie, G and Beattie, B. (2012) Chasing Lost Times. A Father and Son Reconciled Through Running. London: Mainstream Publishing^[48]
• Beattie, G. (2011). Get The Edge: How Simple Changes Will Transform Your Life. London: Headline Book Publishing.^[49]
• Beattie, G. (2010). Why Aren't We Saving The Planet? A Psychologist's Perspective. UK: Routledge: London.^[50]
• Beattie, G. (2004). Protestant Boy. Granta: London.^[51]
• Beattie, G. (2003). Visible Thought: The New Psychology of Body Language. Routledge: London.^[52]
• Beattie, G. (2002). The Shadows of Boxing: Prince Naseem and those he left behind. Orion: London.^[53]
• Beattie, G. (2000). The Corner Boys. Klett-Cotta: Berlin.^[54]
• Beattie, G. (1999). Belfastin Pojat. Otava: Helsinki.^[55]
• Beattie, G. (1998). Head-to-Head: Uncovering the Psychology of Sporting Success. Victor Gollancz: London.^[56]
• Beattie, G. (1998). Hard Lines: Voices from Deep within a Recession. Mandolin: Manchester.^[57]
• Beattie, G. (1998). The Corner Boys. Victor Gollancz: London. Published in paperback, Indigo: London (1999).^[58]
• Beattie, G. (1996). On the Ropes: Boxing as a Way of Life. Victor Gollancz: London. Published in paperback, Indigo: London (1997).^[59]
• Beattie, G. (1992). We Are the People. Journeys Through the Heart of Protestant Ulster. Heinemann: London. (pp. 246).^[60]
• Beattie, G. (1990). England After Dark. Weidenfeld & Nicolson:London.^[61]
• Beattie, G. (1989). All Talk: Why it's important to watch your words and everything else you say. Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London.^[62]
• Beattie, G. (1988). Beachwatching. Rambletree Press: Hove.^[63]
• Beattie, G. (1987). Making It: The Reality of Today's Entrepreneurs. Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London.^[64]
• Beattie, G. (1986). Survivors of Steel City. Chatto & Windus: London.^[65]
• Ellis, A. & Beattie, G. (1986). The Psychology of Language and Communication. Psychology Press: London.^[66]
• Beattie, G. (1983) Talk: An Analysis of Speech and Non-Verbal Behaviour in Conversation. Open University Press: Milton Keynes.^[67]

Selected Publications (from 2005)

Nonverbal Communication

• Beattie, G. (2016) Rethinking Body Language: How Hand Movements Reveal Hidden Thoughts. London: Routledge^[46]
• Beattie, G. (2016). How Donald Trump bullies with his body Language. In D. Lilleker, E. Thorsen, D. Jackson& A. Veneti (Eds.), US Election Analysis 2016: Media, Voters and the Campaign (p30). Bournemouth: CSJCC.^[68]
• Beattie, G., Webster, K. A., & Ross, J. A. D. (2014). Do speakers really unconsciously and imagistically gesture about what is important when they are telling a story? Semiotica, 202, 41-79.
• Beattie, G. & Shovelton, H. (2011). An exploration of the other side of semantic communication: How the spontaneous movements of the human hand add crucial meaning to narrative. Semiotica., 184, 33-51.
• Cohen, D., Beattie, G. & Shovelton, H. (2011). Tracking the distribution of individual semantic features in gesture across spoken discourse: New perspectives in multi-modal interaction. Semiotica, 185, 147-188.
• Beattie, G., Webster, K. & Ross, J. (2010). The fixation and processing of the iconic gestures that accompany talk. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 20, 1-20. Further details
• Cohen, D., Beattie, G. & Shovelton, H. (2010). Nonverbal indicators of deception: How iconic gestures reveal thoughts that cannot be suppressed. Semiotica, 182, 133-174.^[69]
• Holler, J., Shovelton, H. & Beattie, G. (2009). Do iconic hand gestures really contribute to the communication of semantic information in a face-to-face context? Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 33, 73-88.Access article
• Beattie, G. & Shovelton, H. (2006). When size really matters: How a single semantic feature is represented in the speech and gesture modalities. Gesture, 6, 63-84. Further information
• Beattie, G. & Shovelton, H. (2005). Why the spontaneous images created by the hands during talk can help make TV advertisements more effective. British Journal of Psychology, 96, 21-37.

Sustainability

• Beattie, G., Marselle, M., McGuire, L., & Litchfield, D. (in press). Staying over-optimistic about the future: Uncovering attentional biases to climate change messages. Semiotica.
• Power, N., Beattie, G. & McGuire, L. (in press). Mapping our underlying cognitions and emotions about good environmental behaviour. Why we fail to act despite the best of intentions. Semiotica.
• Beattie, G. & McGuire, L. (2016). Consumption and climate change. Why we say one thing but do another in the face of our greatest threat. Semiotica.213, 493-538.
• McGuire, L. & Beattie, G. (2016). Consumers and climate change. Can the presence of others promote more sustainable consumer choice? The International Journal of Environmental Sustainability.12, 33-56.
• Beattie, G & McGuire, L. (2015). Harnessing the unconscious mind of the consumer: How implicit attitudes predict pre-conscious visual attention to carbon footprint information on products. Semiotica, 204, 253-290.
• Beattie, G & McGuire, L. (2014). The psychology of consumption: or why we don’t do what we say. In Ulph, A. and Southerton, D. Sustainable Consumption: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Oxford University Press: London.
• Beattie, G. (2012) How effective is carbon labelling for the consumer? Nature Climate Change, 2, 214-217.^[70]
• Beattie, G. & McGuire, L. (2012). See no evil? Only implicit attitudes predict unconscious eye movements towards images of climate change. Semiotica.^[71]
• Beattie, G. (2011) Making an action film. Do films such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth really make any difference to how we think and feel about climate change? Nature Climate Change, 1, 372-374.^[72]
• Beattie, G. & Sale, L. (2011). Shopping to save the planet? Implicit rather than explicit attitudes predict low carbon footprint consumer choice. The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability, 7, 211-232.
• Beattie, G. & McGuire, L. (2011). Are we too optimistic to bother saving the planet? The relationship between optimism, eye gaze and negative images of climate change. The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability, 7, 241-256. Further details
• Beattie, G., Sale, L., & McGuire, L. (2011). An Inconvenient Truth? Can extracts of film really affect our psychological mood and our motivation to act against climate change? Semiotica, 187, 105-126.^[73]
• Beattie, G. McGuire, L. & Sale, L. (2010). Do we actually look at the carbon footprint of a product in the initial few seconds? An experimental analysis of unconscious eye movements. The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability, 6, 47-66.
• Beattie, G. & Sale, L. (2009). Explicit and implicit attitudes to low and high carbon footprint products. The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability, 5, 191-206. Further details

Implicit Racial Bias

• Beattie, G. (2013). Our Racist Heart? An Exploration of Unconscious Prejudice in Everyday Life. Routledge: London.
• Beattie, G., Cohen, D.L. & McGuire, L. (2013). An exploration of possible unconscious ethnic biases in higher education: The role of implicit attitudes on selection for university posts. Semiotica, 197, 217-247.
• Beattie, G. & Johnson P. (2011). Unconscious Bias in Recruitment and Promotion and the Need to Promote Equality. Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, 16, 7-13.

Beattie was Professor of Psychology at the University of Manchester from 1994 until 2012. His departure in 2012 led to Employment Tribunal proceedings. The Employment Tribunal found in favour of Professor Beattie. . The University made a financial settlement to Professor Beattie in respect of Employment Tribunal case number 2401282/2013 which both parties have agreed not to disclose.

References