Dana R. Carney
Associate Professor | Director, Institute for Personality and Social Research | Barbara and Gerson Bakar Faculty Fellow | Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA, UNITED STATES
Areas of Expertise (6)
Nonverbal Behavior
Predjudice & Discrimination
Power and Status
Social Perception
Automaticity
Social Behavior and Market Outcomes
About
Dana R. Carney is an associate professor at Berkeley Haas and an affiliate of the UC Berkeley Department of Psychology. She is also director of the Institute of Personality and Social Psychology (IPSR) and a Barbara and Gerson Bakar Faculty Fellow. Carney studies social behavior, and she is particularly interested in the behavioral expression of prejudice, political affiliation and engagement, generosity, power, and status. Her work often dives deeply into the most micro aspects of social behavior—nonverbal behavior—and much of her work seeks to uncover what it is we actually do with our bodies and faces when we express prejudice, or status, for example. She has been invited to share her research and teaching at academic conferences, universities, and companies all over the world. To Wall Street, she often instructs on topics related to power, status, corruption, and deception. To biotech, pharma, and tech she instructs on topics related to subtle forms of prejudice and discrimination, teamwork, culture, power, and nonverbal communication. At the National Labs, she instructs on teamwork, diversity, and social networks.
Prior to Berkeley, Carney was an assistant professor of Management at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. She has served as Faculty Director for Women in Technology at Berkeley Executive Education.
Carney teaches undergraduates and MBA and Ph.D. students at Berkeley Haas and in the Psychology Department. She has published over 50 research articles, many of which are highly cited and visible in the media and in popular books. In 2011 she received the National Science Foundation’s CAREER award in Social Psychology and in 2010 the Rising Star award from the Association for Psychological Science. Carney received her PhD in social psychology from Northeastern University in 2005 and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University until 2008.
Education (3)
Northeastern University: PhD, Social Psychology 2005
California State University, Fullerton: MA, Psychology 1999
University of San Francisco: BA, Psychology 1997
Links (7)
Honors & Awards (7)
Barbara and Gerson Bakar Faculty Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley
2018 - present 2014 - 2016
Schwabacher Fellowship, Haas School of Business
2013 - 2014
Hellman Faculty Fellow
2013 - 2014
CAREER Award, National Science Foundation
2011 - 2016
Columbia University Diversity Initiative, Social interaction in zero-sum strategic games
2008
Mind, Brain, and Behavior Postdoctoral Fellowship
Fellowship
American Psychological Association Dissertation Research Award
2004
Selected External Service & Affiliations (6)
- Editorial Board, Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology
- Associate Editor: Emotion 2015-2017
- Guest Associate Editor: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2014-current
- Guest Associate Editor: Management Science
- Reviewer: Social Psychological and Personality Science 2011-2012
- Ad hoc reviewer: Administrative Science Quarterly; Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, California Management Review; Journal of Experimental Social Psychology; Journal of Experimental Psychology-General, Emotion; European Journal of Personality; Journal of Nonverbal Behavior; Journal of Personality; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; Journal of Research in Personality; Journal of Marriage and Family; Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin; Political Psychology; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Psychological Science; Social Neuroscience; National Science Foundation; Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes; Perception; Psychoneuroendocrinology; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Positions Held (1)
At Haas since 2010
2018 – present, Director, Institute for Personality and Social Research 2014 – present, Associate Professor, Haas School of Business and Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley (Affiliate) 2011 – 2014, Assistant Professor, Haas School of Business and Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley (Affiliate 2012-2014) 2008 – 2010, Assistant Professor, Columbia University 2005 – 2008, Post-doctoral Fellow, Harvard University (Mind, Brain, and Behavior Fellow 2005-2007)
Media Appearances (9)
UC-Berkeley Haas Shakes Up MBA Core Curriculum
Poets & Quants online
2021-08-03
The changes come from an eight-member “task force” created by Harrison during the pandemic. Haas faculty members Ross Levine and Dana R. Carney led the committee, which made recommendations back in April.
Hard skills or soft skills for the youth?
World Bank Blogs online
2021-06-02
A new study co-authored by Paul Gertler, the Li Ka Shing Professor of Economics and faculty director of the Institute for Business & Social Impact (IBSI); Assoc. Prof. Dana Carney; and Laura Chioda, IBSI's research director, looked at the results from two mini-MBA trainings for Ugandan students who were trained in both hard and soft skills. As it turned out, both skill sets created substantial economic impact.
Turn and face the strange: Why your real self is the most persuasive
Muse online
2019-09-09
According to work by Assoc. Prof. Dana Carney, Director for the Institute for Personality and Social Research, and former Haas postdoctoral fellow Leanne ten Brinke, people are pretty good at detecting dishonesty with split-second, gut-level accuracy—way better than they are at consciously calling bullshit. So when you tell little white lies to get in your audience's good graces, there's a good chance you'll end up tripping their deception alarm.
Five science-based tips to ace that job interview
Entrepreneur online
2018-10-18
No. 1 is get in early. Work by Assoc. Prof. Dana Carney suggests that humans are predisposed towards the items that are first on a list.
'Power Poses' Don't Actually Work. Try These Confidence-Boosting Strategies Instead
Time Magazine online
2017-09-26
Assoc. Prof. Dana Carney says that certain nonverbal displays, such as a smile or an open posture, signal confidence and the possibility that one is higher within a given hierarchy.
How the ticking clock kills
Forbes India online
2017-08-10
Pfeffer’s most recent research, coauthored with Dana R. Carney from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, demonstrates the physiological consequences of the economic evaluation of time. Their study concludes that people who are keenly aware of the economic value of their time—people who think of time as money—generally are more psychologically stressed and exhibit higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol that do people for whom the economic value of time is less salient.
Forget Facial Expressions and Reputation: 3 Surprising Rules to Sharpen Your Trust Instincts
Reader's Digest online
2017-06-22
Dana Carney of the Haas School of Business in Berkeley, California, has demonstrated that increases in power make people better liars. Participants played roles in a fake business. “Bosses” had bigger offices than “workers,” got to assign workers salaries, and so forth. Half of participants (both “bosses” and “workers”) were instructed to steal a $100 bill. Those told to steal could keep the money if they could convince the experiment runner that they didn’t take it. (That person didn’t know who was assigned to steal and who wasn’t.)
A simple mental trick can help you figure out who’s telling a lie
Quartz online
2017-06-13
Last week, when Senator Martin Heinrich questioned ex-FBI director James Comey during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, the New Mexico Democrat suggested that understanding what happened in private discussions between Comey and U.S. president Donald Trump comes down ultimately to which man one chooses to believe. “Do you want to say anything,” he asked Comey, “as to why we should believe you?”
8 signs you're being lied to
Business Insider online
2017-05-15
How many people have you spoken with today? Chances are that most of them lied to you—and that they did it more than once. It's a hard fact to accept, but even your closest friends and coworkers lie to you regularly.
Working Papers (1)
Making entrepreneurs: returns to training youth in hard versus soft business skills.
Yap, A. J., Wazlawek, A., Lucas, B., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Carney, D. R., NBER Working Paper Series.
Yap, A. J., Wazlawek, A., Lucas, B., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Carney, D. R., NBER Working Paper Series. (2021)
Selected Papers & Publications (21)
Power Poses: The state of the effect (or lack thereof).
A. Goethals (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Leadership Studies.
Carney, D. R.
(in press)
Accurately judging strangers’ social network size, composition, and interconnectedness: The phenomenon and a behavioral consequence.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
Mobasseri, S., Stein, D., & Carney, D. R.
(in press)
10 things every manager should know about nonverbal behavior.
California Management Review
Carney, D.
2021
The nonverbal display of power, status, and dominance.
Current Opinion in Psychology
Carney, D. R.
2020
A structural model of social determinants of the metabolic syndrome.
Ethnicity & Disease
Smith, K. W., Krieger, N., Kosheleva, A., Urato, M., Waterman, P. D., Williams, D. R., Carney, D. R., Chen, J. T., Bennett, G., & Freeman, E.
2020
Follow your gut? Emotional Intelligence moderates the association between physiologically measured somatic markers and risk-taking.
Emotion
Yip, J. A., Stein, D., Côté, Stéphane, & Carney, D. R.
2020
Different physiological reactions when observing lies vs. truths: initial evidence and an intervention to enhance accuracy.
Journal of Personality & Social Psychology,
ten Brinke, L., Lee, J. J., & Carney, D. R.
2019
The economic evaluation of time causes stress.
Academy of Management Discoveries
Pfeffer, J., & Carney, D. R.
2018
Accuracy of judging affect and accuracy of judging personality: How and when are they related?
Journal of Personality
Hall, J. A., Gunnery, S., Letzring, T., Carney, D. R., & Colvin, C. R.
2017
CRSP special issue on power poses: what was the point and what did we learn?
Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology
Cesario, J., Jonas, K., & Carney, D. R.
2017
Can ordinary people detect deception after all?
Trends in Cognitive Science
ten Brinke, L., Vohs, K., & Carney, D. R.
2016
Unacquainted callers can predict which citizens will vote over and above citizens’ stated self-predictions
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Todd Rogers, Leanne ten Brinke, and Dana R. Carney
April 2016
Dominant, open nonverbal displays are attractive at zero-acquaintance
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Vacharkulksemsuk, T., Reit, E., Khambatta, P., Eastwick, P., Finkel, E., & Carney, D.
April 2016
The physiology of (dis)honesty: Is it bad for your health?
Current Opinion in Psychology
ten Brinke, L., Lee, J. & Carney, D. R. (
2015
Telling lies in scarce environments.
Journal of Experimental Psychology, General
ten Brinke, L., Khambatta, P., & Carney, D. R.
2015
Some evidence for the nonverbal contagion of implicit racial bias.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
Willard, G., Isaac, K. J., & Carney, D. R.
2015
Summary of research on the embodied effects of expansive (vs. contractive) nonverbal displays.
Psychological Science
Carney, D. R., Cuddy, A. J. C, & Yap, A. J.
2015
Wanted: direct comparisons of unconscious versus conscious lie detection.
Psychological Science
ten Brinke, L., & Carney, D. R.
2014
Some evidence for unconscious lie detection.
Psychological Science
ten Brinke, L., Stimson, D., & Carney, D. R.
2014
Racial discrimination & cardiovascular disease risk: My Body My Story study of 1005 US-born black and white community health center participants
PLoS ONE
Krieger N., Waterman, P. D., Kosheleva, A., Chen, J. T., Smith, K. S., Carney, D. R., Bennett, G., Williams, D. R., Thornhill, G., & Freeman, E.
2013
The ergonomics of dishonesty: The effect of incidental expansive posture on stealing, cheating and traffic violations.
Psychological Science
Yap, A. J., Wazlawek, A., Lucas, B., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Carney, D. R.
2013
Teaching (2)
Leading People
UGBA 105
Research in Micro-Organizational Behavior
PhD 259A