Deborah H Gruenfeld is a social psychologist whose research and teaching examine how people are transformed by the organizations and social structures in which they work. The author of numerous articles on the psychology of power, and on group behavior, Professor Gruenfeld has taught popular courses on these and related topics to MBA students and executives at Stanford and at Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

Professor Gruenfeld’s work on the psychology of power not only gives credence to the old adage that power corrupts, but it explains why this occurs. Whereas the classic Machiavellian perspective suggests that power’s effects are mostly premeditated and strategic, her research suggests that when power corrupts, it can be without conscious awareness. Her theory of power, published in Psychological Review with co-authors Dacher Keltner and Cameron Anderson, asserts that power is disinhibiting: by reducing concern for the social consequences of one’s actions, power strengthens the link between personal desires and the acts that satisfy them. Recent papers document also that power leads to an action-orientation (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,) limits the ability to take another's perspective (Psychological Science), and that it increases the tendency to view others as means to an end (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology).

Professor Gruenfeld joined the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2000. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Cornell University in 1983, her master’s in journalism from New York University in 1985, and her PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1993. She was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavior Sciences from 2002-2003, and she is a member of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. Professor Gruenfeld is also the recipient of research grants from the MacArthur Foundation though the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security at the University of Illinois; and the Citicorp Behavioral Sciences Research Council.