Biography
Dr. Robert W. Livingston is Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Director for the Centre for Leadership, Ethics, and Diversity (LEAD) at University of Sussex. Prior to joining Sussex, he held faculty positions at the Lecturer and Senior Lecturer/Reader level at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (USA). He has also held visiting faculty positions at Princeton University and Carnegie Mellon University.
Dr. Livingston’s research focuses on issues of leadership, authority, diversity, and legitimacy. In particular, his work focuses on the unique challenges of women and minority leaders, and the barriers to and benefits of organisational diversity. He is also interested in topics related to ethics and power, leader selection, social justice, and intergroup discrimination. His research has been published in top-tier, four-star journals such as the: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the journal of Basic and Applied Social Psychology and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
His research has also been featured in prominent media outlets including: The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, Newsweek, Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, Financial Times, ABC News, Expansion, CNN, Yahoo, and MSNBC. He is a member of numerous professional organisations, including the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) and the Academy of Management (AOM), and is the recipient of coveted awards for teaching, research, and publication excellence.
Dr. Livingston has also served as a leadership and diversity consultant for numerous Fortune 500 companies, and is active in creating and delivering executive education programmes for high-potential employees and industry leaders around the world. In his free time, he enjoys travel, nature and outdoor activities, cooking, whisky and wine tasting, real estate investment, history, jazz, and international politics. He is fluent in several foreign languages.
Representative Publications:
Livingston, R. W. & Pearce, N. A. (2009) The teddy bear effect: Does babyfaceness benefit Black CEOs? Psychological Science, 20, 1229-1236.
Livingston, R. W., Rosette, A. S., & Washington, E. F. (2012). Can an angry Black woman get ahead? The impact of race and dominance on perceptions of female leaders. Psychological Science, 23, 354-358.
Rosette, A. S., & Livingston, R. W. (2012). Failure is not an option for Black women: Effects of organizational performance on leaders with single versus dual-subordinate identities. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 1162-1167.
Cheon, B., Livingston, R. W., Chiao, J., & Hong, Y. Y. (in press). Gene x environment interaction on intergroup bias: The role of 5-HTTLPR and perceived outgroup threat. Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience.
Halevy, N., Chou, E. Y., Cohen, T. R., & Livingston, R. W. (2012) Status conferral in intergroup social dilemmas: Behavioral antecedents and consequences of prestige and dominance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 351-366.
Hall, E. V., & Livingston, R. W. (2012). The hubris penalty: Biased responses to “celebration” displays of Black football players. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 899-904.
Chaio, J., Cheon, B., Livingston, R. W., & Hong, Y. Y. (2012). Gene x Environment interaction in social cognition. In S. Fiske & N. Macrae (Eds.), Handbook of Social Cognition (pp. 523-541). Sage: New York.
Kramer, R. M., Leonardelli, G. J., & Livingston, R. W. (2011). Social Identity, Intergroup Relations and Social Cognition: A festschrift in honor of Marilynn Brewer. Taylor and Francis: New York. (*Winner--Best Book of 2011 Award from The Center for Optimal Adult Development)
Livingston, R. W. (2011). What can tolerance teach us about prejudice? In L. Tropp & R. Mallett (Eds.), Moving Beyond Prejudice Reduction: Pathways to Positive Intergroup Relations (pp. 21-40). American Psychological Association: Washington, DC.
Ashburn-Nardo, L., Livingston, R. W., & Waytz, J. (2011). Implicit bias: A better metric for racial progress? In G. S. Parks & M. W. Hughey (Eds.), The Obamas and a (Post) Racial America (pp. 30-44). Oxford University Press: New York.
Livingston, R. W. & Drwecki, B. B. (2007). Why are some individuals not racially biased? Susceptibility to affective conditioning predicts nonprejudice toward Blacks. Psychological Science, 18, 816-823.
Alexander, M. G., Brewer, M. B., & Livingston, R. W. (2005). Putting stereotype content in context: Image theory and interethnic stereotypes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 781-794.
Livingston, R. W. (2002). The role of perceived negativity in the moderation of African Americans’ implicit and explicit racial attitudes, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 405-413.
Livingston, R. W., & Brewer, M. B. (2002). What are we really priming? Cue-based versus category-based processing of facial stimuli, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 5-18 (*High-Impact Article: Cited over 100 times)
Livingston, R. W. (2001). What you see is what you get: Systematic variability in perceptual-based social judgment, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 1086-1096.