Reinout W Wiers

Reinout W. H. J. Wiers is a Dutch psychologist and writer. He currently serves as a Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Amsterdam, a position he has held since 2008. He also serves as the co-chair of the Centre for Urban Mental Health.

Early life and education Wiers was born in the Netherlands. He earned a Master of Science in psychonomics from the University of Amsterdam in 1992, graduating cum laude. Later, he completed his Ph.D. in experimental psychopathology at the same institution in 1998, under the supervision of Joe Sergeant, Boudewijn Gunning, and Ken Sher from the University of Missouri.

In 2009, Wiers introduced the alcohol-related approach-avoidance task (AAT), a tool for assessing implicit appetitive tendencies toward alcohol. Building on this, Wiers developed automatic action tendency re-training to reduce alcohol consumption among students and increase abstinence rates in alcoholic patients, with subsequent studies validating these interventions.

Wiers is involved in integrating Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) with Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM) applications, including mobile and gamified formats. A New Approach to Addiction and Choice (2024)

Awards and recognition Wiers was awarded the VIDI research grant in 2002 and the VICI research grant in 2008 by the Dutch National Science Foundation (N.W.O.) for his work on implicit cognition and addiction.