Lee Ross was a professor of psychology at Stanford University and co-founder of the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation. The author of three influential books, Human Inference and the Person and the Situation (both with Richard Nisbett) and, more recently The Wisest One in the Room (with Thomas Gilovich) and many highly cited papers, his research on attributional biases and shortcomings in human inference has exerted a major impact in social psychology and the field of human inference, judgment and decision-making. Among the phenomena he identified and has explored are the fundamental attribution error, the false consensus effect, reactive devaluation, the hostile media phenomenon, and the convictions of naïve realism.

More recently he had ventured into more applied domains, exploring psychological barriers to dispute resolution (most notably the phenomenon of reactive devaluation) and participating in conflict resolution efforts in the Middle East and Northern Ireland. He has also taken part in efforts to deal with other applied topics including telemarketer fraud directed against the elderly, the behavior aspects of health care utilization and the problem of combating global warming. Ross was elected in 1994 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2010 to the National Academy of Sciences. He has also received distinguished career awards from the American Psychological Society and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology.
Education: University of Toronto BA, 1965. Columbia University PhD, 1979 (where he earned his PhD with Stanley Schachter. Upon graduation in 1969, he joined Stanford faculty)