Lee Ross, Expert in Why We Misunderstand Each Other, Dies at 78

Personal humiliation inspired Lee Ross’s greatest insight.

In 1969, when he defended his graduate dissertation at Columbia University, a committee of faculty members let loose a downpour of esoteric questions. Mr. Ross had done a study of how perceptions differed under bright and dim light. What, one inquisitor asked, was the wavelength of the dim light, calculated in the infinitesimal unit of measurement known as angstroms?

That’s what it meant to be a real academic, Mr. Ross thought: to know about stuff like angstroms. He felt sure he was unworthy.

That same month, he went to Stanford University, where he’d gotten a job as a junior professor. He found himself at another dissertation defense, this time cast in the role of professor.

“I had this remarkable experience that the student seemed intimidated, and seemed to regard me just like the other faculty,” Professor Ross recalled in an oral history created last year by Stanford. “I, too, could ask questions that revealed particular bits and pieces of knowledge that I happened to have for various reasons, and I could ask the questions in a nice or, if I chose, slightly contemptuous way.”

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