Jennifer S. Lerner is an American experimental social psychologist known for her research in emotion and decision theory.
At Harvard, her titles include Professor of Public Policy and Management, Professor of Psychology (by courtesy appointment), Faculty Director in the Graduate Commons Program, co-founder of the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory and co-director of the Harvard Faculty Group on Emotion, Decision Making, and Health.
From 1999 to 2007 she served on the faculty of the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University.
Her primary PhD advisors were Dacher Keltner, Philip E. Tetlock and Shelley Taylor.
[3] Lerner's research focuses on the influence of specific emotions (e.g., happiness or anger), in contrast to most models, which focus on larger categories of emotions (e.g., positive moods or negative moods) on behavior and decision making.