Dr. Jennifer Lerner is Professor of Public Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government as well as Director of the Harvard Laboratory for Decision Science. This inter-disciplinary laboratory, which she co-founded with two economists, draws primarily on psychology, economics, and neuroscience to study human judgment and decision-making. Professor Lerner pursues two primary research interests within the field of Decision Science: (1) emotionand (2) accountability. Her emotion research examines how human feelings influence outcomes involving risk perception, every day economic transactions, and legal judgments. Lerners teaching revolves around the same set of topics within Decision Science, including classes for undergraduate, graduate, and executive students. Professor Lerner publishes her research widely in scientific journals – summaries of which appear in popular print (e.g., TheNew York Times) and broadcast media (e.g., Good Morning America). She also serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and the Journal of Behavioral Decision Research. She has received several awards for her research, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Professor Lerner joined the faculty at Harvard and received tenure as a full professor in 2007. Prior to Harvard, she was the McCandless Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. Her graduate-level training includes an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a postdoctoral fellowship in affect and psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA.

Courses Taught:

MLD-307 ^[1] Trust, Emotion, Ethics, and Morality in Negotiation and Decision Making – Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Research Interests: Accountability, emotion, human emotion, judgment and decision-making, leadership, management, organizational behavior, risk perception, social psychology, negotiation

Selected Publications:

Keltner, D. & Lerner, J.S. (in press). Emotion. To appear in D.T. Gilbert, S.T. Fiske, and

Cryder, C.E., Lerner, J.S., Gross, J.J., & Dhal, R.E. (2008). Misery is not miserly. Psychological Science, 525-530.

Small, D.A. & Lerner, J.S. (2008). Emotional policy: Personal sadness and anger shape judgments about a welfare case. Political Psychology, 29, 149-168.

Han, S., Lerner, J.S., & Keltner, D. (2007). Feelings and Consumer Decision Making: The Appraisal-Tendency Framework. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 158-168.

Lerner, J.S., Dahl, R.E., Hariri, A.R., and Taylor, S.E., (2007). Facial expressions of emotion reveal neuroendocrine and cardiovascular stress responses.

G. Lindzey (Eds.) The Handbook of Social Psychology.

Lerner, J.S., Tiedens, L.Z. (2006). Portrait of the angry decision maker: How appraisal tendencies shape anger’s influence on cognition. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making (Special Issue on Emotion and Decision Making), 19, 115-137.

Lerner, J.S., Small, D.A., and Loewenstein, G. (2004). Heart strings and purse strings: Carry-over effects of emotions on economic transactions. Psychological Science, 15, 337-341.

Lerner, J.S., Gonzalez, R.M., Small, D.A., and 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., & Tetlock, P.E. (1999). Accounting for the effects of accountability. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 255-275.

Link to website:

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/about/faculty-staff-directory/jennifer-lerner ^[2]