The work of Geoffrey Beattie, a British psychologist, has focused for years on the analysis of nonverbal communication and showed how hand movements, as people speak, also communicate.
He has published several books and academic articles on this subject and has been awarded several times for his research, so Beattie is a psychologist renowned for bringing discoveries from the academic field of psychology closer to the general public.
- He was the face of psychology on the TV show Big Brother in the UK.
- In this sense.
- He has devoted a great effort to showing non-specialized audiences how psychology can help people in their daily lives.
An example of this is his book Get The Edge: How Simple Changes Will Transform Your Life, which has been translated into several languages.
Geoffrey Beattie was born in Belfast, Royaume-Uni. Se graduated in psychology from the University of Birmingham and completed his doctorate at Trinity College, Cambridge.
He has been appointed Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Sheffield. From an early age, his interest has focused on the link between nonverbal communication, language and thought.
The area in which he grew up was constantly e wrapped in violent clashes and riots, which led to the publication of several Beattie books on the subject of Ulster, one of Ireland’s four historical or traditional provinces, and the situation of Protestants.
Beattie has made several documentaries about northern Ireland’s problem for television channels such as the BBC. His radio tour began with his interest in the relationship between sport and psychology.
On the other hand, his participation in one of the seasons of the British version of the reality show Big Brother brought him many headaches, his participation as an advisor in the direction of the program has caused a great controversy in the academic field.
Geoffrey was accused by other psychologists of giving credibility to what they considered a blatant exploitation of people for commercial purposes, but the discussion was reduced to that.
According to Beattie’s version, his participation was not much different from the analysis of the meaning of a politician’s actions or any other media personality.
His controversial role on the reality show earned Geoffrey Beattie the position of being unfairly known to the public as the psychologist of the British Big Brother.
Beattie’s research has reconceptualized nonverbal communication and our knowledge of the relationship between language and nonverbal communication during a conversation and its implications for effective communication.
His studies have focused on iconic speech gestures, cognitive, social and pragmatic functions, i. e. how gestures and speech complement each other to give way to a complex form of communication.
This is particularly interesting when iconic gestures reflect aspects of thought that have not been articulated with words.
Geoffrey Beattie also studied how we can decode iconic gestures when interacting with someone else, and why some of these gestures immediately attract the caller’s gaze and attention.
Another interesting aspect of his research in this field are the possible applications of this theoretical perspective in advertising. One of her researches was awarded the Mouton d’Or Award for Best Semiotics Research.
Another area of research targeted by this outstanding researcher is implicit racial bias, which always focuses on the most implicit and unconscious aspects of human beings, studied how implicit racial attitudes affect the choices we make.
This research has focused in particular on the fixation of the gaze and how it can reflect the idea we build of the person in front of us when it belongs to an ethnicity different from our own.
In recent years, Geoffrey Beattie has also been interested in studying psychological barriers that create barriers to adopting more sustainable lifestyles.
His research has led him to carry out important analyses of consumers and markets for possible changes in consumer attitudes; changes in attitudes that, on the other hand, contribute to more responsible behaviors in the face of climate change.