Andrea Dittmann

Andrea Dittmann is an organizational scholar who studies how inequality shapes interpersonal and relational processes in workplaces and communities. Her research develops theory on how people interpret others’ motives, form trust, and navigate collaboration and relationships as a function of the contexts and roles they occupy in societal and organizational hierarchies. Based on these insights, she then examines how features of interactions and institutions can be redesigned to disrupt these dynamics and reduce inequality.

She examines these processes across multiple empirical contexts, including employees' social class backgrounds and interactions between employees in oppositional occupations (e.g., policing) and the communities they serve. Across these settings, her work highlights how everyday interpersonal dynamics can both sustain and disrupt societal inequalities.

Her research has been published in leading academic journals, including Nature Communications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and has been featured in outlets such as Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, and Politico. Prior to joining USC, Dittmann was on the faculty at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. She earned her Ph.D. in Management & Organizations from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.