Edward Ellsworth "Ned" Jones (August 11, 1926 – July 30, 1993) was an influential American social psychologist, he is known as father of Ingratiation due to his major works in the area.
[2] Jones's work is centered on the attribution process, co-developing his theory of correspondent inferences with Keith Davis.
Jones noted, "I have a candidate for the most robust and repeatable finding in social psychology: the tendency to see behavior as caused by a stable personal disposition of the actor when it can be just as easily explained as a natural response to more than adequate situational pressures.
"[3] One of the best-known single papers co-authored with Victor Harris in 1967 tested this theory and led to the development of the fundamental attribution error.
In 2004, a book of his selected works was published by John Wiley & Sons, edited by former student Daniel Gilbert.