Jim Sidanius is the John Lindsley Professor of Psychology in memory of William James and of African and African American Studies in the departments of Psychology and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Stockholm, Sweden and has taught at several universities in the United States and Europe, including Carnegie‑Mellon University, the University of Texas at Austin, New York University, Princeton University, the University of Stockholm, Sweden, and the University of California, Los Angeles. His primary research interests include the interface between political ideology and cognitive functioning, the political psychology of gender, group conflict, institutional discrimination and the evolutionary psychology of intergroup conflict.
He has authored and published more than 330 scientific papers, and his most important theoretical contribution to date is the development of social dominance theory, a general model of the development and maintenance of group-based social hierarchy and social oppression. Professor Sidanius’ latest books are entitled: Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression (1999, Cambridge University Press), Racialized Politics: Values, Ideology, and Prejudice in American Public Opinion (University of Chicago press, 2000), Key Readings in Political Psychology (Psychology Press, 2004), and The Diversity Challenge: Social Identity and Intergroup Relations on the College Campus (Russell Sage Foundation, 2008).
Prof. Sidanius was also the recipient of the 2006 Harold Lasswell Award for “Distinguished Scientific Contribution in the Field of Political Psychology” awarded by the International Society of Political Psychology, was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007 , was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology in 2009, was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science in 2013, and was the recipient of the 2013 Career Contribution Award conferred by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.