Bruno J. Verschuere

Bruno Verschuere is Professor of Forensic Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, where he has served as Head of the Department of Clinical Psychology since 2023 and was promoted to full professor in February 2025. His career includes serving as Associate Professor of Forensic Psychology at the University of Amsterdam (2011-2025) and as a Postdoctoral Researcher of the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) at Ghent University (2005-2011). His research focuses on deception, lie detection, psychopathy, forensic psychology, and memory detection.

Verschuere is internationally recognized for his pioneering work on the Concealed Information Test (CIT), particularly the reaction time-based CIT (RT-CIT). He co-edited the landmark book "Memory Detection: Theory and Application of the Concealed Information Test" (2011) with Gershon Ben-Shakhar and Ewout Meijer, which remains the definitive work on this approach. His early research examined whether enhanced responding to concealed information during polygraph examination is due to orienting or defensive responding, using mock crime experiments with psychophysiological measures. His work has shown that two paradigms show particular promise for deception detection: the RT-based Concealed Information Test (RT-CIT), with its key strength being a low false positive rate, and the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT). More recently, he conducted an influential meta-analysis on the Verifiability Approach, finding that truth tellers provided more verifiable details than liars.

Verschuere is Associate Professor of Forensic Psychology at the University of Amsterdam and a Founding Member of the European consortium of Psychological Research on Deception Detection. He has been a prolific collaborator, working extensively with Ewout H. Meijer, Gershon Ben-Shakhar, Geert Crombez, Ernst H.W. Koster, and other leading researchers in deception detection. He co-edited the influential volume "Detecting Deception: Current Challenges and Cognitive Approaches" (2014) with Pär Anders Granhag and Aldert Vrij. His academic work is complemented by extensive experience working with partners from the field, including the Ministry of Justice and Security, forensic care institutions and numerous research centres, with hopes to strengthen these partnerships and develop new initiatives to bridge the gap between science and practice.

Verschuere's polygraph research connects to broader work in forensic psychology, clinical psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. His research on the Concealed Information Test investigates whether examinees recognize secret information, such as crime suspects recognizing critical crime details that only the culprit could know, offering a knowledge-based approach as an alternative to traditional stress-based lie detection. His work spans from fundamental psychophysiological research on orienting responses to applied studies on sex offender management, cognitive load in deception, and the use of machine learning for automated deception detection.