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, 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.

Ross also 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.

Ross was elected in 1994 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2010 to the National Academy of Sciences. He also received distinguished career awards from the American Psychological Society and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology.