Tiedens Takes Permanent Post Directing CASBS
Larissa “Lara” Tiedens, a social psychologist who has twice served as interim director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, has been named the Stanford University-located center’s permanent director.
Tiedens had been interim director of CASBS from June 2025 until Tino Cuéllar assumed the role as a permanent director in July. But Cuéllar quickly accepted a high-profile and newly created job from artificial intelligence company Anthropic, leaving the leadership role open and seeing Tiedens filling in again. CASBS announced her appointment on September 1.
She takes a position endowed in 2015 by Sara Miller McCune, the philanthropist and founder of Sage, the parent of Social Science Space, and will hold the title of Sara Miller McCune Director. Tiedens also spent a year in residence as a CASBS fellow in 2008-09. She joined the center’s board of directors in 2023, and was co-chair of its development committee.
“We’re at a moment that demands the rigorous interdisciplinary approaches CASBS brings to understand the problems of an information-challenged age, the shifting relations between humans and machines, and the pressures facing democracies,” Tiedens was quoted. “I’m excited to build on the momentum of this past year and am grateful for the confidence the board and the university have placed in me.”
Outside of CASBS, Tiedens had extensive experience leading higher education and research institutions.
She was a faculty member of the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) for 18 years, the last 10 as the Jonathan B. Lovelace Professor of Organizational Behavior, and the last four as senior associate dean of academic affairs. She served as the Morgan Stanley Director of Stanford GSB’s Center for Leadership Development and Research from 2011-12, then served as GSB senior associate dean of academic affairs from 2012-16.
In 2016, she became the ninth president of Scripps College, one of the Claremont Colleges in that Southern California city. At Scripps, Tiedens created the Centennial Strategic Plan for Scripps College, completed the largest campaign in the college’s history, redesigned financial aid, spearheaded racial equity initiatives, and formed new partnerships to advance science and technology education and community engagement.
From 2021-24, she served as executive director of Schwarzman Scholars, a post-graduate program inspired by the Rhodes scholarship and designed to build a community of future leaders who will deepen understanding between China and the rest of the world.
Tiedens’ academic background is in social psychology. She earned a PhD at the University of Michigan, and her research explores the psychological dynamics that produce and maintain interpersonal social hierarchies, the ways in which emotions influence and are influenced by social roles, and the effects of emotions on decision making. Her most recent work bridges behavioral science with emerging technology, investigating AI’s capacity to diagnose social relationships and group dynamics. In recognition of her contributions to the science of personality and social psychology, she was named a Fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
