Skip to main content
  • Conferences
  • Speakers
  • Skillcamp
Notifications
  • Strategies for Online and Offline Success
    ×
  • That Will Get You Speaking Engagements in 2024
    ×
  • For a Meeting or Talk
    ×
  • SpeakerHub's commitment to innovation and user-centric design.
    ×
  • How to Make Your Public Speech Professional and Memorable
    ×
  • SIGN UP
  • SIGN IN
  1. Home
  2. Find a speaker
  3. John Petrocelli
John Petrocelli's cover banner
John Petrocelli's picture

John Petrocelli

PhD
Professor
Wake Forest University
Country or state 
United States (North Carolina)
Available to 
Global
City 
Cornelius
Fee 
Ask for pricing
Languages 
English
Volunteer
No

Personal Details

Bio

Social Psychologist Dr. John V. Petrocelli has the goal of helping organizational leaders better position themselves and their organizations to reach their fullest potential. With strategies rooted in scientific research, that’s exactly what he does, empowering organizational leaders with proven tools for improving communication, strengthening influence, and establishing a foundation of evidence-based management.

A provocative and convincing speaker, Dr. Petrocelli offers practical and immediately actionable strategies that actually enhance the chances of successfully meeting professional and organizational goals. By emphasizing social science and the things that successful organizations do consistently and effectively, he shows organizations and their employees a clear path to accomplishing their goals.

Dr. Petrocelli offers keynotes and seminars on a variety of leadership, communication, and evidence-based management topics that are critical to high-performance in business management, market intelligence, technology, behavioral design, finance, education, and health care.

Dr. John V. Petrocelli is an experimental social psychologist who researches, writes, and speaks about the science of communication and decision making. He is a Professor of Psychology at Wake Forest University, teaching social psychology and judgment and decision making. He is also the author of The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit. His research examines the causes and consequences of bullshit and bullshitting in the way of better understanding and improving bullshit detection and disposal. Dr. Petrocelli’s research contributions also include attitudes and persuasion and the intersections of counterfactual thinking with learning, memory and decision making. His research and writings have been featured by the Wall Street Journal and in his popular TEDx Talk, Why BS is More Dangerous Than a Lie. Dr. Petrocelli has delivered keynotes for Financial Executives Networking Group of Charlotte, NC, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and more.

In addition to his research and position as an Associate Editor of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, he has authored over 50 papers in his field’s most prestigious journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, British Journal of Social Psychology, and Thinking and Reasoning. He has received numerous awards for his teaching and research achievements.

Dr. Petrocelli is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science. He was also elected to the highly selective Society for Experimental Social Psychology, and he is a fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He gives frequent invited addresses and speaks regularly at national conferences, and is available for speaking and consulting engagements, primarily in business.

Current position (1)

Professor

Wake Forest University

Degrees (1)
Psychology PhD
Indiana University
2002 to 2007

Presentations

Presentations (1)
PROMOTING AN EVIDENCE-BASED CULTURE IN THE WORKPLACE

Based on Dr. Petrocelli’s latest TEDx Talk, Why BS is More Dangerous Than a Lie, his own empirical research, and his new book, The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit, Dr. Petrocelli presents an eye-opening, groundbreaking, and evidenced-based tour of the causes, dysfunctions, and costs of bullshit, showing how it operates in our communicative culture and how you can make significantly better decisions in the workplace.

We’ve long assumed that bullshitting is a harmless social activity. Perhaps this is why it is such a common social activity. In fact, research shows there are over three dozen situations and reasons people bullshit in the workplace. However, social psychological research suggests we couldn’t be more wrong. Bullshit communications, at the expense of evidence-based communication, have devastating effects on beliefs about what is true, memory, attitudes and opinions, as well as judgment and decision making.

Past talks (1)
Why BS is more dangerous than a lie | John Petrocelli | TEDx University of Nevada
John V. Petrocelli
Reno, NV
March 28, 2019
  • All
  • Videos
  • Photos
This speaker hasn't uploaded any media content yet.

Books & Articles (6)

The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit
St. Martin's Press,
2021
Petrocelli, J. V. (2021). Bullshitting and persuasion: The persuasiveness of a disregard for the truth. British Journal of Social Psychology, 60, 1464-1483.
Petrocelli, J. V. (2021). Expert bullshit detection. Skeptic, 26(3), 47-53.
Petrocelli, J. V., Watson, H. F., & Hirt, E. R. (2020). Self-regulatory aspects of bullshitting and bullshit detection. Social Psychology, 51, 239-253.
Petrocelli, J. V. (2020). Bullshit and its detection: The conditions under which common, everyday bullshit is most likely to emerge. Skeptic, 25(2), 50-55.
Petrocelli, J. V. (2018). Antecedents of bullshitting. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 76, 249-258.

Expertise (7)

Leadership
Business
Evidence-Based Management Psychological processes Influence and Persuasion judgment and decision-making Data-Driven Decisions
Recommendations
Why choose me? 

A provocative and convincing speaker, offers practical and immediately actionable strategies.

Similar to John
  • DeAngelo Burse's picture
    DeAngelo
    Burse
    Founder and CEO
    Breakroom Huddle
  • Robb Holman's picture
    Robb
    Holman
    Global Speaker & Best-Selling Author
    Holman International
  • Gui Athia's picture
    Gui
    Athia
    Speaker & Mentor
    Gui Athia
  • Laura Mathis's picture
    Laura
    Mathis
    Executive Communication Coach
    The Speech Improvement Company
  • Pamela Wigglesworth's picture
    Pamela
    Wigglesworth
    CEO, Communication Consultant
    Experiential Pte Ltd
  • Speakers
  • Agencies
  • Events
  • How it works
  • Blog
  • Upgrade
  • Podcast
  • About us
  • Organizers
  • Terms of use
  • Privacy policy
  • FAQ
  • API
  • Contact
  • Corporate Speakers Bureau & CRM
  • Motivational speakers
  • Leadership speakers
  • Business speakers
  • Inspirational speakers
  • Keynote speakers
  • Corporate speakers
  • Celebrity speakers
  • Top 50 Business Speakers
  • Top 50 Leadership Speakers
  • Top 50 Motivational Speakers
  • Top 50 Technology Speakers

Get speaking tips & so much more!

Twice a month we send you speaking tips, training ideas and lots of useful updates.

© 2026 SpeakerHub
All rights reserved.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • SoundCloud