Loftus received a Bachelor of Arts in experimental psychology from Brown University in 1967 and a Doctor of Philosophy in experimental psychology from Stanford University in 1971, where his advisor was Richard C. Atkinson. He subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship under the mentorship of George Sperling in 1972, and he joined the faculty of the University of Washington thereafter, where he has remained since.
He specializes in memory and attention, and his most recent research focuses on face perception and hindsight bias. He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the 1995-1996 academic year. Geoff Loftus was married to fellow psychologist Elizabeth Loftus from 1968 to 1991.
They are now divorced, but remain close colleagues.
Increasingly, Loftus has been applying his scientific work to issues in human cognition that have arisen in legal cases. He has participated in one way or another in approximately 1,000 such cases.
He has testified as an expert witness in perception, memory, statistics, and video-game behavior in approximately 265 civil and criminal cases. He has testified in Superior court in 13 United States. states, United States federal courts in 11 different cities, a United States. Court-martial at the United States. Naval Air Station Sigonella in Italy, and Canadian court in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
His work has been cited by the Innocence project in several of their cases, most notably that of Darrell Edwards.
He has written articles on information loss in the human visual system associated with a witness"s seeing someone from a specific distance (most relevant to the Innocence Project work) and visual hindsight bias.
