Rate My Professor Henry Otgaar

Henry Otgaar is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law and Criminology at KU Leuven, affiliated with the Leuven Institute of Criminology (LINC), and Full Professor of Legal Psychology in the Section of Forensic Psychology at Maastricht University’s Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience. He completed his studies in psychology, neuropsychology, and psychology and law at Maastricht University from 2001 to 2005, earned his PhD cum laude there in 2009, worked as a teaching assistant from 2005 to 2006 and postdoc from 2009 to 2011, and has held his professorial position at Maastricht since 2011. At KU Leuven, Otgaar conducts research as part of LINC, focusing on memory processes in legal contexts.

Otgaar’s research specializations include forensic psychology, false memories, eyewitness memory, investigative interviews, memory undermining, traumatic memory, lying on memory, and child forensic interviews. He leads multiple projects at LINC, such as Denying traumatic experiences - how false denials might impact false memory formation (2020-2024), The validity of testimonies in the legal field: How people (mis)remember and forget autobiographical experiences (2019-2024), and When Lies Become the Truth: The Impact of Lying on Memory in the Courtroom (2019-2023). With over 12,500 citations on Google Scholar, his influential publications feature The malevolent side of human nature: A meta-analysis and critical review of the literature on the dark triad (Muris, Merckelbach, Otgaar, & Meijer, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2017, 1,481 citations), A multilab preregistered replication of the ego-depletion effect (Hagger et al., Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2016, 1,435 citations), The return of the repressed: The persistent and problematic claims of long-forgotten trauma (Otgaar et al., Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2019, 289 citations), True or false? Memory is differentially affected by stress-induced cortisol elevations and sympathetic activity at consolidation and retrieval (Smeets, Otgaar, Candel, & Wolf, Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2008, 437 citations), and Adaptive memory: Survival processing increases both true and false memory in adults and children (Otgaar & Smeets, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2010, 244 citations). His work advances understanding of memory reliability in judicial settings and influences practices in witness and suspect interrogations.