Lee Ross, a psychological scientist celebrated for his work on biases in decision making, died Friday, May 14 in Palo Alto, California. In a career that stretched over 50 years at Stanford University, Ross was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1994) and the National Academy of Sciences (2010). In 2003, he received the APS William James Fellow Award in recognition of his extensive research on judgement, inferences, and decision making.
Ross died of a longstanding heart condition and was in the company of his family at the time of his passing, according to APS Fellow Hazel Markus, a close friend.
Born in Toronto in 1942, Ross influenced many fields of psychology, including attitude formation and change, social cognition, judgment and decision-making, social influence, intergroup relations and political psychology. His research generally focused both on sources of bias and error and strategies to ameliorate them.