University of London, Birkbeck College
Graduate Student, Neuroscience
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Dr. Geoff Bird
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About
My research interest is deception, viewed as an example of motivated social cognition. Although generally frowned upon, lying is a remarkably common element of everyday social interaction. A large body of research has demonstrated that normal individuals fare little better than chance at detecting deception, while the ability to effect successful deception has been largely ignored, despite evidence that it may play the deciding role in the outcome of any deceptive encounter. My preliminary hypothesis is that the ability to detect deception and the ability to deceive successfully share a common basis, meaning good liars may be good lie-detectors, and vice versa.
Employing behavioural paradigms, neuroimaging techniques (including fMRI) and innovative analysis techniques, I am examining the social cognitive and neural correlates of this putative deception-general ability. Candidate skills are theory of mind (ToM) and empathy, the representations of others' mental and emotional states respectively, both potentially valuable to the manipulation of others' beliefs and to the decoding of their true intentional states. My research is supported by an ESRC Ph.D. studentship.
I enjoy teaching alongside my research and have had the opportunity to be a Seminar Leader, Lead Demonstrator and Lecturer on a number of courses ranging from 1st year Research Methods and Statistics to 4th year Critical Analysis by way of Lecturing on Social Psychology and Social Cognition.
