Carol Tavris

Carol Anne Tavris (born September 17, 1944) is an American social psychologist and feminist. A public intellectual, she has devoted her career to writing and lecturing about the contributions of psychological science to the beliefs and practices that guide people's lives, and to criticizing "psychobabble," "biobunk," and pseudoscience. Her many writings have dealt with critical thinking, cognitive dissonance, anger, gender, and other topics in psychology.

Tavris received a B.A. in comparative literature and sociology from Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Michigan. She has taught psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles and the New School for Social Research. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Tavris is also a member of the editorial board of Psychological Science in the Public Interest. Her articles, book reviews, and op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Scientific American and other publications. In 2014 she began writing a column for Skeptic under the heading The Gadfly.