Jennifer Lerner

Institution Harvard University Current Position Professor of Public Policy and Management Highest Degree Ph.D. in Psychology from University of California, Berkeley, 1998 Research Interests Emotion Health Judgment/Decision Making Person Perception Laboratory Home Page Laboratory for Decision Science Courses Taught Accountability and Human Performance Advanced Topics in Emotion and Decision Making Emotion and Social Behavior Reason, Passion and Social Cognition Social Cognition   Jennifer Lerner John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University 79 JFK Street, Mailbox 124 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 U.S.A. Home Page Phone: (617) 495-9962 Research Overview. I am an experimental social psychologist who studies the influence of emotional and social/structural factors on judgment and choice. My research takes shape at the nexus of psychology, economics, and neuroscience, incorporating aspects of all three disciplines. Emotional Influences on Judgment and Choice. Since antiquity, philosophers have debated the normative relationship between emotion and reason. But sustained empirical inquiry into the descriptive relationship of emotion and reason has historically been scant. My research seeks to address this gap by examining specific mechanisms through which emotion and thought interactively shape judgment and choice. Two themes characterize my approach. First, I focus on the carryover of emotion into circumstances unrelated to the situation which originally elicited the emotion. For example, I have shown how anger about an unjust event increases punitive attitudes, even in situations entirely unrelated to the original injustice. Second, I focus on the influence of specific emotions (e.g., happiness or anger), in contrast to most models, which focus on larger categories of emotions (e.g., positive moods or negative moods). I have proposed a framework which predicts that the influence of a specific emotion on judgment depends on a variety of cognitive factors related to the source of each emotion. Currently I am working with colleagues to test predictions from this framework. For example, in a series of studies we are examining the distinct effects of fear, anger, and happiness on risk perception and risk preference. Finally, my newest work on emotion examines relationships among emotion dispositions, physiological (e.g., cardiovascular and neuroendocrine) responses to stress, and judgments of well-being. Social/Structural Influences on Judgment and Choice. I see a need to link models of individual judgment and choice to the authority relationships within which people work and live. Toward this goal, I am conducting a series of studies on the effects of various kinds of accountability relationships on social judgments and choices. For example, I am examining how different kinds of accountability relationships shape the judgments people make about who should receive scarce resources. More generally, I am interested in identifying the conditions under which increased accountability will improve performance. I have recently proposed a flexible contingency model for predicting the conditions under which a particular kind of accountability will attenuate, have no effect on, or amplify biases in judgment and choice. Research Synthesis. In both of the above areas, my research emphasizes the social-interpersonal aspects of behavior. Indeed, the two areas come together in a model predicting how interpersonal factors (such as accountability) can moderate the influence of emotion on judgment. Overall, my students and I seek to elucidate the ways in which individual thought, feeling, and action combine with social/institutional settings to shape judgment and decision making. With this knowledge, we teach public leaders (and future leaders) strategies for structuring judgment and decision processes to avoid biases and achieve desired outcomes. Journal Articles: Cryder, C. E., Lerner, J. S., Gross, J. J., & Dahl, R. E. (2008). Misery is not miserly. Psychological Science, 19, 525-530. Lerner, J. S., Dahl, R. E., Hariri, A. R., & Taylor, S. E. (in press). Facial expressions of emotion reveal neuroendocrine and cardiovascular stress responses. Biological Psychiatry. Lerner, J. S., Goldberg, J. H., & Tetlock, P. E. (1998). Sober second thought: The effects of accountability, anger, and authoritarianism on attributions of responsibility. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 563-574. Lerner, J. S., & Gonzalez, R. M. (2005). Forecasting one's future based on fleeting subjective experiences. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 454-466. Lerner, J. S., Gonzalez, R. M., Small, D. A., & Fischhoff, B. (2003). Effects of fear and anger on perceived risks of terrorism: A national field experiment. Psychological Science, 14, 144-150. Lerner, J. S., & Keltner, D. (2001). Fear, anger, and risk. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 81(1), 146-159. Lerner, J. S., & Keltner, D. (2000). Beyond valence: Toward a model of emotion-specific influences on judgment and choice. Cognition and Emotion, 14, 473-493. Lerner, J. S., Small, D. A., & Loewenstein, G. (2004). Heart strings and purse strings: Carryover effects of emotions on economic decisions. Psychological Science. Lerner, J. S., & Tetlock, P. E. (1999). Accounting for the effects of accountability. Psychological Bulletin, 125(2), 255-275. Small, D. A., Lerner, J. S., Gonzalez, R. M., & Fischhoff, B. (2004). Emotion priming and attributions for terrorism: Americans' reactions in a national field experiment. Political Psychology. Taylor, S. E., Lerner, J. S., Sage, R. M, Lehman, B., & Seeman, T. (2004). Early environment, emotions, responses to stress, and health. Journal of Personality, 72, 1365-1393. Taylor, S. E., Lerner, J. S., Sage, R. M., Sherman, D. K., & McDowell, N. K. (2003). Portrait of the self-enhancer: Well adjusted and well liked or maladjusted and friendless? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 165-176. Taylor, S. E., Lerner, J. S., Sherman, D. K., Sage, R. M., & McDowell, N. K. (2003). Are self-enhancing cognitions associated with healthy or unhealthy biological profiles? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 605-615. Other Publications: Lerner, J. S., & Tetlock, P. E. (2003). Bridging individual, interpersonal, and institutional approaches to judgment and choice: The impact of accountability on cognitive bias. In S. Schneider & J. Shanteau (Eds.), Emerging Perspectives on Judgment and Decision Making (pp. 431-457). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Loewenstein, G., & Lerner J. S. (2003). The role of affect in decision making. In R. Davidson, H. Goldsmith, & K. Scherer (Eds.), Handbook of Affective Science (pp. 619-642). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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