Robert Livingston, Ph.D.
Lecturer of Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Dr. Robert Livingston is a social psychologist whose research has been published in top-tier academic journals such as Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Leadership Quarterly. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review.
Prior to joining the Harvard Kennedy School in 2015, he was an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, associate professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and professor of organizational behavior at the University of Sussex in England, where he was the chair of the organizational behavior area as well as the founder and faculty director of the Centre for Leadership, Ethics, and Diversity (LEAD).
His research ranges from micro-level investigations of the psychological and physiological processes that underlie unconscious bias to more macro-level examinations of how biases impact organizational diversity, leadership representation, and social justice. For example, his research on the “Teddy Bear Effect” finds that Black CEOs uniquely benefit from having facial features that make them appear warmer and less threatening (i.e., babyfaceness). He is also known for his research on the intersectionality of race and gender, and how the nature of bias systematically differs for White women, Black women, and Black men.
He is a practitioner as well as a researcher. For decades, he has served as a diversity consultant to scores of Fortune 500 companies, public-sector agencies, and nonprofit organizations. He is the author of the book The Conversation: How Seeking and Speaking the Truth about Racism Can Radically Transform Individuals and Organizations, recently published by Penguin Random House.
