Lee Ross - Life

Life

Ross earned his Ph.D. in social psychology at Columbia University in 1969 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.

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.

He has also done and applied work related to global warming, social security choices, health care, women in science and the academic challenges faced by minority students. He also participated in public peace processes and "second-track" diplomacy in Northern Ireland, the Caucuses and the Middle East.

Read more about this topic:  Lee Ross

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    In time, after a dozen years of centering their lives around the games boys play with one another, the boys’ bodies change and that changes everything else. But the memories are not erased of that safest time in the lives of men, when their prime concern was playing games with guys who just wanted to be their friendly competitors. Life never again gets so simple.
    Frank Pittman (20th century)

    Then farewell, world; thy uttermost I see;
    Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.
    Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)

    The child thinks of growing old as an almost obscene calamity, which for some mysterious reason will never happen to itself. All who have passed the age of thirty are joyless grotesques, endlessly fussing about things of no importance and staying alive without, so far as the child can see, having anything to live for. Only child life is real life.
    George Orwell (1903–1950)