Geoffrey Loftus (born December 24, 1945) is a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...

at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

. He specializes in

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered ...

and attention, and his most recent research focuses on

face perception Facial perception is an individual's understanding and interpretation of the face. Here, perception implies the presence of consciousness and hence excludes automated facial recognition systems. Although facial recognition is found in other sp ...

and

hindsight bias Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along phenomenon or creeping determinism, is the common tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they actually were. People often believe that after an event ha ...

. Loftus received a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in experimental psychology from Brown University in 1967 and a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in experimental psychology from Stanford University in 1971, where his advisor was Richard C. Atkinson. He subsequently completed a

postdoctoral fellow A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to p ...

ship under the mentorship of

George Sperling George Sperling (born 1934) is an American cognitive psychologist, researcher, and educator. Sperling documented the existence of iconic memory (one of the sensory memory subtypes). Through several experiments, he showed support for his hypothe ...

in 1972, and he joined the faculty of the

shortly thereafter, where he has remained since. He taught at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

during the 1995–1996 academic year. Geoff Loftus was married to fellow psychologist

Elizabeth Loftus Elizabeth F. Loftus (born 1944) is an American psychologist who is best known in relation to the misinformation effect, false memory and criticism of recovered memory therapies. Loftus's research includes the effects of phrasing on the percep ...

from 1968 to 1991. They are now divorced, but remain close colleagues. Geoff Loftus retired from full-time professorship in July, 2017, primarily to focus on his legal work. He still regularly testifies as an expert witness.

Legal work

Increasingly, Loftus has been applying his scientific work to issues in human cognition that have arisen in legal cases. He has participated in one way or another in approximately 1,000 such cases. He has testified as an expert witness in perception, memory, statistics, and video-game behavior in approximately 265 civil and criminal cases. He has testified in Superior court in 13 U.S. states,

United States federal courts The federal judiciary of the United States is one of the three branches of the federal government of the United States organized under the United States Constitution and laws of the federal government. The U.S. federal judiciary consists primaril ...

in 11 different cities, a U.S. Court-martial at the U.S.

Naval Air Station Sigonella Naval Air Station (NAS) Sigonella is an Italian Air Force base ('' it, Aeroporto "Cosimo Di Palma" di Sigonella''), and a U.S. Navy installation at Italian Air Force Base Sigonella in Sicily, Italy. The whole NAS is a tenant of the Italian Air ...

in Italy, and Canadian court in

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749, ...

, Manitoba. His work has been cited by the

Innocence project Innocence Project, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal organization that is committed to exonerating individuals who have been wrongly convicted, through the use of DNA testing and working to reform the criminal justice system to prevent futu ...

in several of their cases, most notably that of Darrell Edwards. He has written articles on information loss in the human visual system associated with a witness's seeing someone from a specific distance (most relevant to the Innocence Project work) and visual hindsight bias.Harley, E.M., Carlsen, K.A., & Loftus, G.R. (2004). The "Saw-it-all-along" effect: Demonstrations of visual hindsight bias. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 30, 960-968
Why peoples' perception of poor-visual-quality objects changes after they already know what it is.

References

External links

Geoffrey Loftus's homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Loftus, Geoffrey Living people 1945 births 21st-century American psychologists Memory researchers Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the Society of Experimental Psychologists Stanford University alumni Brown University alumni University of Washington faculty 20th-century American psychologists