Psychology

Profile

Background

I was awarded my PhD in 1991 at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and came to the UK in 1994, when I joined the Psychology Department as a Senior Lecturer. In 1996 I was promoted to Reader and in 2000 to my current position: Professor of Applied Social Psychology.

I am the Editor of Legal and Criminological Psychology, a Journal published by the British Psychological Society and serve on the Editorial Boards of several Journals including Law and Human Behavior; Psychology, Public Policy and Law; Human Communication Research; Journal of Nonverbal Behavior; Applied Cognitive Psychology; Psychology, Crime, and Law; and Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling. I am a member of the Board of Governors of the Society for Applied Research in Memory And Cognition (SARMAC). 

Teaching Responsibilities

I co-ordinate a Year 3 unit entitled Psychology and Law, and teach on the Social Psychology unit (Year 2). I supervise dissertations at undergraduate level, and give lectures at postgraduate level. Since my arrival at Portsmouth, I have been, or still am, involved in the supervision of more than 20 PhD students.

Research Interests 

Nowadays my primary research interests are nonverbal and verbal cues to deception, and lie detection. I have published more than 350 articles and book chapters to date, mainly on these subjects. My book Detecting lies and deceit: pitfalls and opportunities (a revised second edition of my 2000 Detecting Lies and Deceit book, and published by Wiley in January 2008) is a comprehensive text about deception and lie detection. It describes the lie detection tools used to date and discusses the problems related to these tools. It also gives guidelines on how to improve lie detection.

I advise the police about conducting interviews with suspects, act as an Expert Witness in court, and give invited talks and workshops on lie detection to practitioners and scholars across the world. Most of my research is grant-funded, and sponsors include (in alphabetical order): The British Academy, The Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), The Dutch Government, The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, The Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the UK Government, and the US Government. I am the contact person of E-PRODD, European consortium of Psychological Research on Deception Detection.

Recent Publications

More recent publications

Indicative Publications

(NOTE: The publications below are a selection of recent indicative publications. For published versions of any of the articles below, please email me. At the end of this section there is a link to a list of all of my publications in English.)

Warmelink, L., Vrij, A., Mann, S., Leal, S., Forrester, D., & Fisher, R. (in press). Thermal imaging as a lie detection tool at airports. Law & Human Behavior.

Nahari, G., Vrij, A., & Fisher, R. (in press). Does the truth come out in the writing? SCAN as a lie detection tool. Law & Human Behavior.

Vrij, A., Granhag, P. A., Mann, S., & Leal, S. (2011). Outsmarting the liars: Towards a cognitive lie detection approach. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 28-32.

Vrij, A., Granhag, P. A., & Porter, S. B. (2010). Pitfalls and opportunities in nonverbal and verbal lie detection. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 11, 89-121.

Vrij, A., Leal, S., Granhag, P. A., Mann, S., Fisher, R. P., Hillman, J., & Sperry, K. (2009). Outsmarting the liars: The benefit of asking unanticipated questions. Law and Human Behavior, 33, 159-166.

Vrij, A. (2008). Detecting lies and deceit: pitfalls and opportunities.  Chichester: Wiley. ISBN 9780470516249 (hbk) or 9780470516256  (pbk). 

Vrij, A., Mann, S., Fisher, R., Leal, S., Milne, B., & Bull, R. (2008). Increasing cognitive load to facilitate lie detection: The benefit of recalling an event in reverse order. Law and Human Behavior, 32, 253-265.

Vrij, A., Mann, S., Kristen, S., & Fisher, R. P. (2007). Cues to deception and ability to detect lies as a function of police interview styles. Law and Human Behavior, 31, 499-518.

Vrij, A., Akehurst, L., & Knight, S. (2006). Police officers', social workers', teachers' and the general public's beliefs about deception in children, adolescents and adults. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 11,  297-312.

Vrij, A., Fisher, R., Mann, S., & Leal, S. (2006). Detecting deception by manipulating cognitive load. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10,  4, 141-142..

Vrij, A., Mann, S., & Fisher, R. P. (2006). An empirical test of the Behaviour Analysis Interview. Law and Human Behavior, 30,  329-345.

Vrij, A. (2005). Criteria-Based Content Analysis: A qualitative review of the first 37 studies. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 11, 3-41.

Vrij, A. (2004). Invited article: Why professionals fail to catch liars and how they can improve. (Invited article). Legal and Criminological Psychology, 9, 159-181.

Mann, S., Vrij, A., & Bull, R. (2004). Detecting true lies: Police officers' ability to detect deceit. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 1, 137-149.

Good Liars: Our invited article in Review of Policy Research that never got published

For a full list of my publications written in English please view this PDF.