Jennifer Lerner is the Thornton F. Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy, Decision Science, and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she made history as the first psychological scientist to be awarded tenure. She also holds appointments in Harvard's Department of Psychology and Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences. Her interdisciplinary work bridges psychology, economics, and neuroscience to improve decision-making in high-stakes contexts. Dr. Lerner's educational background includes a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California – Berkeley followed by a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA. Prior to joining Harvard in 2007, she served on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, first as Assistant Professor and later as the Estella Loomis McCandless Associate Professor of Social and Decision Science. Lerner's research focuses on how emotions influence judgment and decision-making processes. She developed a theoretical framework that predicts how specific emotions affect risk perception, economic decisions, and responsibility attributions. Her work has demonstrated why fear and anger - though both negative emotions - produce opposing effects on risk perception. Additional research lines focus on improving risk communication and reducing organizational stress. Her publications appear in leading journals including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Nature Human Behavior, with over 40,000 scholarly citations. Her publications reveal consistent themes across psychology, decision science, and public policy. Lerner's work demonstrates the nuanced relationship between specific emotions and decision outcomes, challenging simplified views of emotional influence. She has made significant contributions to understanding how sadness affects addictive behaviors, how gratitude can improve economic patience, and how emotions shape national security decision-making. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development Award National Science Foundation's Sensational 60 designation Harvard's Innovations in Learning and Teaching (HILT) Award Harvard Graduate Student Government's Lectures That Last Award Harvard Kennedy School's Dinner on the Dean Award Navy's Superior Public Service Award Lerner is deeply committed to teaching and mentoring, having received multiple awards for her instructional excellence. She has taught students from undergraduates to senior executives. Her service includes membership on the board of directors for the Forecasting Research Institute, scientific advisory boards for corporations using machine learning, and the Faculty Steering Committee for Harvard's Mind-Brain-Behavior Initiative. From 2018-2019, she took leave from Harvard to serve as the Navy's first Chief Decision Scientist, reporting directly to the Chief of Naval Operations.
