Ross was born in Toronto, Ontario. He earned his Ph.D. in social psychology at Columbia University in 1969 under the supervision of Stanley Schachter.

Ross first coined the term "fundamental attribution error" to describe the finding that people are predisposed towards attributing another person's behavior to individual characteristics and attitudes, even when it is relatively clear that the person's behavior was a result of situational demands (Ross, 1977; note that this effect is identical with the "correspondence bias" identified in Jones & Davis, 1965). With Robert Vallone and Mark Lepper he authored the first study to describe the hostile media effect. He has also collaborated with Richard Nisbett in books on human judgment (Nisbett & Ross, 1980) and the relation between social situations and personality (i.e. "the person and the situation"; Ross & Nisbett, 1991). He is the coauthor (with Richard Nisbett) of the books "Human Inference" and "The Person and Situation" as well as nearly 100 journal articles and book chapters. "The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology" considers the way we make judgements, the way we stress in particular errors and different biases of human behavior. It was one of the most significant books on social inference in 1980.

1994: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2003: American Psychological Society william James Fellow 2008: Distinguished Scientist Award from Society of Experimental Social Psychological

Lee Ross was interested in many fields of psychology, his primary interests and areas of research include; attitudes and beliefs, causal attribution, inter-group relations, judgment and decision Making, persuasion, social Influence, political psychology, social cognition. His research focuses on biases in decision making, judgement, human inference. More importantly on the motivational, cognitive and perceptual biases that disable people in implementing peace agreements and lead them to misinterpret each other's behaviours which create certain barriers in resolving disputes. The barriers to dispute resolution and to implement peace in his work. Recently (2012) Ross has performed research on conflict and peace proceedings to determine how social psychology can reveal the factors that prevent opposing parties from reaching an agreement. With an interdisciplinary group of researchers, Ross has helped found the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation (SCICN). Lee Ross early work explored how an individual behaved when confronted with information, he finally found out what happens when people interact with the bias and worldviews. He believes that "Each person has to believe that their view of reality is how it really is, and conflicts arise when people have different views."