Professor Bruce Hood

Bruce Hood, PhD, is Professor of Developmental Psychology in Society at the University of Bristol. He also spends considerable time in science communication as a writer, presenter and a public speaker.

He is a former Royal Institution Christmas Lecturer and the founder of Speakezee – the world’s largest network of expert speakers.

Bruce has been a research fellow at Cambridge University and University College London, a visiting scientist at MIT and a faculty professor at Harvard. He has diverse research interests including the origins of supernatural beliefs, cognitive development and the science of happiness.

He has been awarded an Alfred Sloan Fellowship in neuroscience, the Young Investigator Award from the International Society of Infancy Researchers, the Robert Fantz Memorial Award, the British Psychological Society (BPS) Award for Distinguished Contribution to Developmental Psychology and BPS Public Engagement and Media Award. He was voted to fellowship status by the society of American Psychological Science, the Royal Institution of Great Britain and the British Psychological Society. He is the former president of psychology section of the British Science Association.

Bruce has written four books for the general public, and his new book on the psychology of ownership, Possessed: Why We Want More than We Need, will be published by Allen Lane next month. He has also co-authored the most successful undergraduate textbook Psychology, now in its 3rd edition (Palgrave, 2011, 2015, 2019).

Bruce has appeared in a number of TV science documentaries and in 2011 he delivered the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures which were broadcast on the BBC to over 4 million viewers. He has also appeared in two feature length documentary films, “Breath of Life” (2016) and “Living in the Future’s Past” (2018) produced and narrated by Academy Winner Jeff Bridges.