Lee D. Ross is the Stanford Federal Credit Union Professor of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University,^[1][2] and an influential social psychologist who has studied attribution theory, attributional biases, decision making and conflict resolution, often with longtime collaborator Mark Lepper. Ross is known for his investigations of the fundamental attribution error, and for identifications and analyses of such psychological phenomena as attitude polarization, reactive devaluation, belief perseverance, the false consensus effect, naive realism, and the hostile media effect.

Life [link]

Ross earned his Ph.D. in social psychology at Columbia University in 1969^[3] under the supervision of Stanley Schachter.

Ross first coined the term "fundamental attribution error" to describe the finding that people are predisposed towards attributing another person's behavior to individual characteristics and attitudes, even when it is relatively clear that the person's behavior was a result of situational demands (Ross, 1977; note that this effect is identical with the "correspondence bias" identified in Jones & Davis, 1965). With Robert Vallone and Mark Lepper he authored the first study to describe the hostile media effect. He has also collaborated with Richard Nisbett in books on human judgment (Nisbett & Ross, 1980) and the relation between social situations and personality (i.e. "the person and the situation"; Ross & Nisbett, 1991). "The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology" considers the way we make judgements, the way we stress in particular errors and different biases of human behavior. It was one of the most significant books on social inference in 1980.^[4]

Professor Ross found a number of provocative phenomena, including "belief perseverance," the "false consensus effect," the "hostile media effect," "reactive devaluation," and "naïve realism," which are in standard textbooks today.^[5]

Awards [link]

1994: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2003: American Psychological Society William James Fellow 2008: Distinguished Scientist Award from Society of Experimental Social Psychological^[6]

Research [link]

Lee Ross was interested in many fields of psychology, his primary interests and areas of research include; attitudes and beliefs, causal attribution, inter-group relations, judgment and decision Making, persuasion, social Influence, political psychology, social cognition.

Selected publications [link]

Books [link]

• Nisbett, R. E., & Ross, L. (1980). "Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment." Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (vol. 10). New York: Academic Press.

Journal Articles [link]

• Ross, L., & Nisbett, R. E. (1991). "The person and the situation: Perspectives of social psychology." New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Ross, L., Curhan, J. R., Neale, & M. A. (2004). "Dynamic valuation: Preference changes in the context of face-to-face negotiation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology", 40(2), 142-151.^[7]
• Ehrlinger, J., Gilovich, T., & Ross, L. (2005). Peering into the bias blind spot: People's assessments of bias in themselves and others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(5), 680-692.
• Hackley, S., Bazerman, M., Ross, L., & Shapiro, D. L. (2005). Psychological dimensions of the Israeli settlements issue: Endowments and identities. Negotiation Journal, 21(2), 209-219.
• Kay, A. C., Wheeler, S. C., Bargh, J. A., & Ross, L. (2004). Material priming: The influence of mundane physical objects on situational construal and competitive behavioral choice. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 95(1), 83-96.
• Liberman, V., Samuels, S. M., & Ross, L. (2004). The name of the game: Predictive power of reputations versus situational labels in determining prisoner's dilemma game moves. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30(9), 1175-1185.
• Lord, C. G., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1979). Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(11), 2098-2109.
• Pronin, E., Gilovich, T., & Ross, L. (2004). Objectivity in the eye of the beholder: Divergent perceptions of bias in self versus others. Psychological Review, 111(3), 781-799.
• Pronin, E., & Ross, L. (2006). Temporal differences in trait self-ascription: When the self is seen as an other. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(2), 197-209.
• Pronin, E., Steele, C. M., & Ross, L. (2004). Identity bifurcation in response to stereotype threat: Women and mathematics. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40(2), 152-168.
• Ross, L., Greene, D., & House, P. (1977). The false consensus effect: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13(3), 279-301.
• Vallone, R. P., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1985). The hostile media phenomenon: Biased perception and perceptions of media bias in coverage of the Beirut massacre. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(3), 577-585. ^[8]

Notable contributions [link]

• Attitude polarization
• Attribution theory
• Bias blind spot
• False consensus effect
• Fundamental attribution error
• Hostile media effect

References [link]

Further reading [link]

• https://lee.ross.socialpsychology.org/research
• Jones, E. E., & Davis, K. E. (1965). From acts to dispositions: The attribution process in person perception. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), "Advances in experimental social psychology," (Vol. 2, pp. 220–266). New York: Academic Press.
• Nisbett, R. E., & Ross, L. (1980). "Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment." Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (vol. 10). New York: Academic Press.
• Ross, L., & Nisbett, R. E. (1991). "The person and the situation: Perspectives of social psychology." New York: McGraw-Hill.

External links [link]

• Home page at Stanford University
• Myoclonic Jerk Podcast - Episode 6 - Interview with Lee Ross on naive realism and the fundamental attribution error.