Naomi B. Rothman

Naomi B. Rothman is a professor of management at Lehigh University’s College of Business where she holds the Scott Hartz ’68 Term Professorship.

Naomi is a leading expert on the study of ambivalence - defined as the simultaneous experience of positive and negative emotions (or cognitions) about a single target (i.e., person, situation, object, event, idea). Across 20 years of research, Naomi has collected scientific evidence demonstrating that despite our erroneous beliefs about ambivalence (it's a weakness), ambivalence actually can improve people's decision making, and performance in contexts like leadership, negotiations, teams, and forecasting.

She has demonstrated the value of ambivalence for individual and team performance in multiple professional and social settings. Through her research, Naomi examines how ambivalence (mixed feelings) can shape people's decision making and leadership in surprisingly beneficial ways. She has found:

Feeling ambivalence, even for short periods, helps people become

• more open minded, intellectually curious, and cognitively flexible,
• better at asking for and taking the perspective of others,
• more capable of solving complex problems in teams,
• less defensive to expert feedback, and
• more accurate forecasters.

When people share their ambivalence in groups it invites others to become

• critical thinkers,
• willing to speak up with constructive challenge, and
• more effective at innovative problem solving.

In short, the benefits accrue not only for ourselves, when we feel ambivalence but also for others, when they observe ambivalence in their leaders.

Naomi has written on these topics in numerous academic journals. Her research has been covered in various media outlets including New York Magazine, Fast Company, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, BBC, and National Public Radio. She was interviewed by Shankar Vedantam of Hidden Brain podcast in 2022 about her research on ambivalence. 

Among other awards, in 2017, Naomi received the Carl & Ingeborg Beidleman Research Award in Business and Economics at Lehigh University, and 40 Best Undergraduate Business School Professors Under 40, Poets&Quants. Naomi teaches the undergraduate Leadership course to Lehigh Business undergraduates and has developed and taught leadership courses for the part-time MBA program and the executive education program at Lehigh University. She has experience conducting workshops with organizations such as Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and the Positive Organizations Consortium through the University of Michigan’s Center for Positive Organizations. She was Division Chair of the Managerial and Organizational Cognition Division of the Academy of Management in 2020-2021. 

Naomi holds a B.A. in Sociology from UC Davis (Highest Honors and Phi Beta Kappa), where she earned a Citation for Outstanding Performance based on her Senior Honors Thesis. She holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from New York University, Stern School of Business. Before joining Lehigh, Naomi served as an Assistant Professor at the College of Business, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Education

• University of California at Davis, B.A.
• Stern School of Business, New York University, Ph.D.

Research Interests

• Emotions and decision making
• Leadership development 
   

• Guarana, C.*, Rothman, N.B.,* & Melwani, S. (2023). Leader Subjective Ambivalence: Enabling Team Task Performance via Information-Seeking Processes, Personnel Psychology, 1- 32.
  • *The first two authors contributed equally to the publication.
• Rothman, N.B., Vitriol, J., & Moskowitz, G. (2022). Internal Conflict and Prejudice Regulation: Emotional Ambivalence Buffers Against Defensive Responding to Implicit Bias Feedback, PLoS ONE, 17(3).
• Rothman, N.B., & Pratt, M.G. (2022). Transforming Information Uncertainty into Employee Well-Being and Resilience: The Importance of Cultivating a Culture of Emotional Ambivalence. Handbook of Uncertainty Management in Work Organizations (Published October 20, 2022).
• Barker Caza, B., Rothman, N.B., Strassman, J. & Lambert, B. (2022, November 24). How Ambivalence Can Help you Make Better Decisions For Your Career and Life. Harvard Business Review. HBR.Org.
• Rothman, N.B., Barker Caza, B., Melwani, S. & Walsh, K. (2021, September 14). Embracing the Power of Ambivalence. Harvard Business Review. HBR.Org
• Melwani, S. & Rothman, N.B. (2021). The Push-and-Pull of Frenemies: When and Why Ambivalent Relationships Lead to Helping and Harming, Journal of Applied Psychology. (Accepted June 14, 2020)
• Rothman, N.B. & Melwani, S. (2017). Feeling Mixed, Ambivalent, and In Flux: The Social Functions of Emotional Complexity for Leaders, Academy of Management Review, Special Issue on Integrating Affect and Emotion in Management Theory, 42, 259-282. (Accepted Feb 21, 2016; Published Online March 25, 2016)
• Rothman, N.B., Pratt, M.G., Rees, L. & Vogus, T.J. (2017). Understanding the Dual Nature of Ambivalence: Why and When Ambivalence Leads to Good and Bad Outcomes, Academy of Management Annals. 11, 33-72. (Accepted October 19, 2016)
• Methot, J. R., Melwani, S., & Rothman, N. B.  (2017). The Space Between Us: A Social-Functional Emotions View of Ambivalent and Indifferent Workplace Relationships, Journal of Management. 43, 1789-1819. (Accepted December 2, 2016; First Published January 27, 2017).
• Belkin, L. & Rothman, N.B. (2017). Do I Trust You? Depends on What you Feel: Interpersonal Effects of Emotions on Initial Trust at Zero-Acquaintance, Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 10, 3-27. (Accepted October 26, 2016)
• Rothman, N.B. & Magee, J.C. (2016). Affective Expressions in Groups and Inferences about Members’ Relational Well-Being: The Effects of Socially Engaging and Disengaging Emotions, Cognition & Emotion, Special Issue on Emotions in Groups, 30, 150-166.
• Rothman, N.B., & Northcraft, G. (2015). Unlocking Integrative Potential: Expressed Emotional Ambivalence and Negotiation Outcomes, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Process, 126, 65-76.
• Vogus, T., Rothman, N.B., Sutcliff, K., & Weick, K. (2014). The Affective Foundations of High Reliability Organizing. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35(4): 592-596.
• Galinsky, A.D., Magee, J.C., Rus, D., Rothman, N.B., and Todd, A.R. (2014). Accelerating with Steering: The Synergistic Benefits of Combining Power and Perspective-Taking, Social Psychological and Personality Science published online 11 February 2014. DOI: 10.1177/1948550613519685
• Blader, S., & Rothman, N.B. (2013). Paving the Road to Preferential Treatment with Good Intentions: Empathy, Accountability and Fairness, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 50, 65-81.
• Rees, L., Rothman, N.B., Lehavy, R., & Sanchez-Burkes, J. (2013). The Ambivalent Mind Can Be a Wise Mind: Emotional Ambivalence Increases Judgment Accuracy, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 360-367.
• See, K.E., Morrison, E.W., Rothman, N.B., & Soll, J.B. (2011). The detrimental effects of power on confidence, advice taking, and accuracy, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 116, 272-285.
• Rothman, N.B. (2011). Steering Sheep: How Expressed Emotional Ambivalence Elicits Dominance in Interdependent Decision-Making Contexts, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 116, 66-82.
• Wiesenfeld, B.M., Rothman, N.B., Wheeler-Smith, S.L., & Galinsky, A.D. (2011). Why fair bosses fall behind. Harvard Business Review. July-August, 2011.
• Peters, M., Rothman, N.B., & Northcraft, G. B. (2011). Beyond Valence: The Effects of Group Emotional Tone on Group Negotiation Behaviors and Outcomes. In E. Mannix, M. Neale, and J. Overbeck (Eds.), Research on Managing Groups and Teams: Negotiation & Groups. United Kingdom: Emerald.
• See, K.E., Rothman, N.B., & Soll, J.B. (2010). Powerful and unpersuaded: The implications of power for confidence, advice taking, and accuracy. In L. A. Toombs (Ed.), Proceedings of the Seventieth Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (CD), ISSN 1543-8643.
• Blader, S., Wiesenfeld, B., Rothman, N.B., Wheeler-Smith, S. (2010). Social Emotions and Justice: How the Emotional Fabric of Groups Determine Justice Enactment and Reactions." In E. Mannix, M. Neale, and E. Mullen (Eds.), Research on Managing Groups and Teams: Justice & Groups. United Kingdom: Emerald.
• Morrison, E.W. & Rothman, N.B. (2009). Silence and the Dynamics of Power. In J. Greenberg & M.S. Edwards (Eds.), Voice and Silence in Organizations. United Kingdom: Emerald.
• Rothman, N.B. & Wiesenfeld, B.M. (2007). The Social Consequences of Expressing Emotional Ambivalence in Groups and Teams. In E. Mannix, M. Neale & C. Anderson (Eds.), Research on Managing Groups and Teams: Affect & Groups. Oxford: Elsevier.
• Horowitz, S., Buchanan, S., Alexandris, M., Anteby, M., Rothman, N., Syman, S. & Vural, L. (2005). The rise of the freelance class: The new constituency of workers building a social safety net. Report, Working Today, Brooklyn, NY, 2005.

In the News

• The Benefits of Mixed Emotions, Hidden Brain
• Embracing the Power of Ambivalence, Harvard Business Review
• The Enduring Value of Emotional Ambivalence, Lehigh University
• Work Frenemy Can Make You Better at Your Job, New York Magazine
• Why You Should Make a Frenemy, New York Magazine
• Love Thy Office Frenemies, NPR
• Frenemies Motivate Us to Work Harder, Harvard Business Review
• Why Fair Bosses Fall Behind, Harvard Business Review
• Research is Growing at Lehigh University, PR Newswire
• To Lead or Not to Lead?, Lehigh University

ilLUminate Posts

• The Deliberation Paradox: When Thinking Before Acting is a Liability
• In Praise of Ambivalence: A Complex Emotion for a Complex World

Awards

• Carl & Ingeborg Beidleman Research Award in Business & Economics
• 40 Best Undergraduate Business School Professors Under 40, Poets&Quants