Lee Ross

Lee Ross
Nationality American
Fields Psychology
Institutions Stanford University
Alma mater Columbia University
Known for fundamental attribution error
attitude polarization
false consensus effect
false polarization effect
hostile media effect
belief perseverance
naive realism
Influences Stanley Schachter, Mark Lepper
Influenced cognitive psychology, social psychology

Lee D. Ross is the Stanford Federal Credit Union Professor of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University,[1] 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.

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Life

Ross earned his Ph.D. in social psychology at Columbia University in 1969[2] 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 behaviour. It was one of the most significant books on social inference in 1980.[3]

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.[4]

Selected publications

Books

Journal Articles

Notable contributions

References

External links