Geoffrey Beattie: The Psychologist Behind Big Brother

The British psychologist, Geoffrey Beattie, has been studying non-verbal communication for several years. In his research, he has shown us that the way we move our hands while talking is also a form of communication.

He has published countless books and articles on the subject. He has also won many awards for his research into it. But that’s not all we know Geoffrey Beattie about. He is one of the psychologists who has become famous.

Beattie was the face of psychology in the program Big Brother in the UK. He also put a lot of effort into helping lay people show how  psychology can help us in our daily lives. A good example of this is his book Get the Edge: How Simple Changes Will Transform Your Life,  which has been translated into several languages.

His biography

Geoffrey Beattie was born in Belfast. He took a degree in psychology from the University of Birmingham and received a PhD in it from Trinity College Cambridge. He then became a lecturer in social psychology at the University of Sheffield. He showed an early interest in the relationship between non-verbal communication, language and thoughts.

The area he grew up in (Northern Ireland) was constantly involved in confrontations and riots. This prompted  Beattie to write several books about the situation with Ulster and the Protestants. He also talked about it in his series of articles he wrote for  The Guardian.

Geoffrey Beattie and the media

He has made several documentaries about Northern Ireland for large companies such as the BBC. Beattie has also appeared on many radio shows, due to his interest in the relationship between sports and psychology.

But the really big media-related moment for him was when  he attended one of the seasons of the British Big Brother . However, it also brought him great headaches. His participation as a consultant for the program caused great controversy in the academic world.

His colleagues in the world of psychology accused him of giving credibility to something they regarded as the massive exploitation of persons for commercial reasons. But despite their criticism, he stayed on the program.

According to Beattie,  what he did was not so much different than analyzing non-verbal communication by a politician or other media figure. That controversy has also led people to (unfairly) see him as the Big Brother psychologist.

Multi-modal communication

Geoffrey Beattie’s research work has completely re-conceptualized our understanding of non-verbal communication. It has revolutionized what we knew about the relationship between language and non-verbal communication in a conversation. It has  many implications for effective communication.

He focused a lot on lexical gestures in speech and the cognitive, social and functional purposes they have. In other words  , he focused on how gestures and speech work together to create an even more complex form of communication.

It is a particularly interesting thing to study when a person’s lexical gestures reflect a part of their mindset that they have not expressed in words.

He also studied how we decode other people’s lexical gestures. Besides, he wanted to understand why some gestures instantly catch another person’s eyes or attention.

Another interesting aspect of his research in this area  is the potential applicability of this theory in advertising. His work in this field actually earned him the Mouton d´Or award for best semiotic research.

Geoffrey Beattie and implicit racial bias

Something else fascinating that this ingenious researcher has studied is  implicit racial bias. Focusing in particular on the most subtle, unconscious aspects of people, he studied how implicit racial attitudes affect the decisions people make.

What he especially studied was the way people (literally) looked at each other. From there, he wanted to see if it reflected the image you form of the person in front of you when they are of a different race.

In recent years, Beattie has also begun to study the psychological barriers that keep people from adopting more viable lifestyles. He has conducted significant analyzes of consumerism and the market to understand how consumers’ attitudes change. The goal is to see how to get people to act more responsibly in relation to climate change.

There is no one who can deny it: Geoffrey Beattie is a fascinating person in psychology right now. Love him or hate him, he has done a lot to bring psychological knowledge to the general community.