Dana R. Carney

Dana R. Carney is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Psychology. She holds the Barbara and Gerson Bakar Faculty Fellowship and leads the Institute for Personality and Social Research. Her work focuses on social judgment, nonverbal communication, power dynamics, and racial bias. Carney’s research integrates behavioral experiments with field studies, notably in Uganda to combat racial prejudice and promote entrepreneurship.

Research Interests:

• Nonverbal behavior’s impact on power and status perceptions
• Racial bias transmission and interventions
• Entrepreneurship education in developing economies
• Decision-making under psychological and environmental stressors

Key Projects:

• A 4,000-participant randomized study in Uganda comparing hard vs. soft skills training for youth entrepreneurship
• Classical conditioning experiments to improve water chlorination adherence in Uganda
• Investigating nonverbal cues in racial bias contagion and mitigation

Lab Members & Collaborations:

Carney mentors a diverse lab including Assistant Professors Leanne ten Brinke (University of Denver), Andy Yap (INSEAD), and PhD students at Berkeley, Stanford, and other institutions. Collaborations span psychology, public health, and economics.