# Henry Otgaar

Henry Otgaar is a professor of legal psychology at the Maastricht University in The Netherlands as well as being a research professor at the Leuven Institute of Criminology in Belgium. Additionally, Dr. Otgaar is a visiting fellow at the City University London and Center of Memory and Law. His main area of research is development of memory. Other areas he specializes in are developmental differences in memory, false memory development, trauma and memory, children and adolescent interrogation, and the evolution of memory.

## Education

Between 2001 and 2005 Otgaar focused his studies at Maastricht University on Psychology, Neuropsychology, Psychology and Law. Otgaar competed his PhD (Cum Laude) between 2006-2009 at Maastricht. Otgaar completed his post-doctorate between 2009-2011 at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience at Maastricht University.

## Career

Otgaar has spent much of his time at Maastricht University. In 2002, Otgaar was a tutor at the University. From 2005 to 2006 he was a teaching assistant on the Faculty of Psychology at Maastricht, pursuing his PhD in 2006 and graduating Cum Laude in 2009. While completing his PhD at the university Dr. Otgaar also became an expert witness for the Maastricht Forensic Institute in 2006, and has devoted much research to the reliability of expert witnesses and memory in court. While finishing his education Otgaar found a specific area in psychology combined with neuroscience where he has dedicated the majority of his research to. Otgaar now primarily focuses on the development of memory and the mechanisms that pertains to memory, his niche, however, is the development of false memories.

## Research

Otgaar has researched repressed memories from psychological trauma, the susceptibility of creating false memories in survival processing, how children may be more resistant to false memory susceptibility, the development of non-believed memories, and what drives the creation of false memories in humans. He perhaps is best known for his work in the developmental changes that occur in memory from childhood all the way till adolescence. Otgaar pays special attention to how the development of memory can be influenced by environmental factors like stress, trauma, and human susceptibility.
In one of his most cited articles, Otgaar explains and studies the idea of repressed memories, what causes them and how the psychological culture has changed towards the idea of repressed memory development in adults. This article questions whether past psychological trauma, whether someone is consciously aware of the trauma or not, could cause someone to forgot a complete autobiographical memory. Repressed memories have been a topic of discussion amongst the psychological, clinical, and legal settings for years, but Otgaar and his team dove deeper into previous research to derive reasons why repressed memories could exist. Otgaar found three reasons why repressed memories are able to develop in humans: retrieval inhibition, motivated forgetting, and the relation between trauma and dissociation. Backing off of repressed memories Otgaar goes further to explain the existence of non-believed memories in adults or even children. This is a rare psychological phenomenon, but alas still exists and happens when someone does not believe an autobiographical memory happened even when recollective features of the memory are present. His research in this study also supports the idea that non believed memories occur more due to high rates of susceptibility and persuasion.
His work with repressed memories also leads into another area that Otgaar has dedicated much of his research towards, false memory recall. Past research has taught us that when in a survival situation your senses are heightened, therefore your memory recall should be higher as well. Otgaar and his team wanted to test whether or not children are less susceptible than adults to false memory recall in a survival scenario. After conducting the study it was learned that whether placed in a survival situation, a pleasant situation, or moving scenario there was no edge in survival recall, and false memories were still produced. However, though Otgaar found an increase in the creation of false memories in a survival scenario, it also allowed both adults and children to have a better true recall advantage in the study. Otgaar, also being an expert witness and clinical psychologist, has much experience within a court and clinical settings on the development of false memories. Though a survival scenario might increase the odds of developing a false memory, Otgaar stresses the importance of knowing what psychological ailments could also induce false memory recall in humans. His research found and supported the idea that individuals with a history of depression, PTSD, and or even trauma are at a higher risk for developing false memories. Otgaar found that when emotional information is presented to person's specific knowledge base, they too are at higher risk for developing false memories.

## Awards

Otgaar has achieved numerous accomplishments within the psychological world, including the Early Career Award presented by the European Association of Psychology and Law.

## Books and publications

Otgaar has published over 200 articles and publications. He has also written the following book.
* Otgaar, Henry, and Mark L. Howe (eds), Finding the Truth in the Courtroom: Dealing with Deception, Lies, and Memories (New York, 2017; online edn, Oxford Academic, 19 Oct. 2017), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190612016.001.0001, accessed 26 Sept. 2024