Patrícia Arriaga holds a Ph.D. in Social and Organizational Psychology from ISCTE (Pre-Bologna, 2006), a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology and Psychopathology from ISPA (Pre-Bolonha, 2 years, 2000), and is graduated in Psychology (5 years, 1996, Area of Clinical Psychology) by ISPA. She is certified by the Portuguese Professional Association of Psychologists (Ordem dos Psicólogos Portuguesa, OPP) in the areas of "Clinical and Health Psychology", "Work, Social and Organizational Psychology" and "Neuropsychology".

Arriaga began teaching in higher education in 1996. She was a Fellow of the Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology (FCT) for Post-Doctoral Studies (2008-2009), conducting her project at both ISCTE and Granada University. Subsequently, she worked as a Researcher (2009-2012) at CIS under the Science 2008 Program, funded by the FCT. 

Currently, she holds the position of an Associate Professor with Habilitation at ISCTE, in addition to her role as a Senior Researcher at CIS, where she is part of the Community, Education and Development (CED) research group. 

Her main research interests focuses on examining socio-affective processes through a multi-method approach (analyzing subjective, behavioral, and physiological responses) in social interactions. She investigates the impact of various social interventions and the use of tools (e.g., multimedia applications, board games, videos, media campaigns, social robots) designed to enhance well-being and prosocial behaviors in social, health, and educational contexts. Her projects typically involve multidisciplinary teams (computer science; education). More recently, she has contributed to meta-science, collaborating with international research teams with a focus on transparent and reproducible research.

She has earned several competitive research projects funded externally (e.g. FCT, Bial Foundation, Erasmus+, Compete 2020) and has published and has published more than one hundred works, including book chapters, conference proceedings, and peer-reviewed journal articles — ranging from specialised to general and multidisciplinary journals..

She has been invited to evaluate scientific articles and competitive research project applications at both national and international levels, including for governmental agencies such as the US National Science Foundation, the Dutch Research Council (Netherlands), the Shota Rustaveli Georgian National Science Foundation (Georgia), and the Swiss National Science Foundation, as well as for universities, namely under the STARS – Supporting TAlent in ReSearch Programme, University of Padua (Italy).

She has been involved in 38 different course units (having taught 32 and coordinated 21) across distinct levels of study (Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral degrees). She has supervised more than 200 students across different levels and formats of advanced training, including doctoral theses, master’s dissertations, curricular and professional internships (including those of the Ordem dos Psicólogos Portuguesa), research fellowships, and pre-Bologna undergraduate dissertations.

She has also held several leadership roles (e.g., Deputy Director of CIs-Iscte andDeputy Director of the Department of Psychology at Iscte, Director of the Master’s in Emotion Sciences; Coordinator of different academic years) and has participated in various committees and strategic groups (e.g., Scientific Committee of CIS-Iscte; Ethics Committee for Psychology at ECSH-Iscte; Scientific Council of LAPSO; Health & Art group of the Iscte-Health Initiative; among others).