Jeff Hancock, PhD

Director of the Stanford Social Media Lab and Professor at Stanford University

Jeff Hancock is the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab and is Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University. Before joining Stanford in 2015, Dr. Hancock was a Professor of Information Science and Communication at Cornell University.

His work focuses on understanding psychological and interpersonal processes in social media. Using computational linguistics and experiments, Dr. Hancock’s research has shed light on how the words we use reveal psychological and social dynamics, such as deception and trust, emotional dynamics, intimacy and relationships, and social support.

Dr. Hancock is a leading expert on how people use deception with technology, from sending texts and emails to detecting fake online reviews. His TED Talk on deception has been seen over 1 million times and he’s been featured as a guest on “CBS This Morning” for his expertise on social media. His research has been supported by funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Defense and featured in the popular press, including the New York Times, CNN, NPR, CBS and the BBC.