He is the Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished Professor of social psychology and co-director of the Culture and Cognition program at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, where his advisor was Stanley Schachter, whose other students at that time included Lee Ross and Judith Rodin.

[2][3] This article was the first comprehensive, empirically based argument that a variety of mental processes responsible for preferences, choices, and emotions are inaccessible to conscious awareness.

On the other hand, more critical reviewers such as Harvard's James J. Lee argued that the book failed to grapple with the strongest evidence for genetic factors in individual and group intelligence differences.

[citation needed] In an interview with The New York Times, Malcolm Gladwell said, "The most influential thinker, in my life, has been the psychologist Richard Nisbett.