John Taylor is an established author, lecturer and advisor on handling human sources of secret intelligence. He has been a senior Research Fellow at King’s College London for four years and contributes to the Master’s courses in the Department of War Studies.

John studied Economics and American Studies at Keele University and after a year doing VSO in Bechuanaland, joined the Foreign Office. He served overseas in Geneva, Moscow, Stockholm and New Delhi. On retirement John set up his own company training intelligence and security services all over the world as well as advising senior executives in the private sector on establishing strong and influential relationships in the business world.

He is the author of various books including, Revealed, assessing and managing the Dark Side of employees and The Psychology of Spies and Spying.

He worked with psychologists from University College London and designed Assessment Centres as well as tools to identify the sources of Insider Threats in organisations before they cause damage. John is a certified practitioner of Hogan’s psychometric tests, the world’s leading tool in assessing personality, motivation and Dark Side behaviour.

Research interests

• Psychology of collecting human intelligence
• The causes of betrayal and the insider threat
• Helping people learn, particularly in an intelligence environment
• Analysis tradecraft
• Assessing the validity of intelligence

Teaching

• Masters in Intelligence and Security

Publications

• Furnham, A. and Taylor, J., 2004. The dark side of behaviour at work: Understanding and avoiding employees leaving, thieving and deceiving. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 

• Furnham, A. and Taylor, J., 2022. The psychology of spies and spying: Trust, treason, treachery. Market Harborough: Troubador Publishing.