David Wilson

David C. Wilson, Ph.D is Dean of the Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Wilson is a political psychologist specializing in the use of survey-based experiments to study political behavior and policy preferences. His scholarship focuses on the psychology of political opinion about policies, contentious social issues, and political figures. He is drawn to investigate justice-related biases in political preferences created by judgements of others.

He is the author of 2022 book, Racial Resentment in the Political Mind (University of Chicago Press), and his scholarship can be found in a variety of research outlets, including Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Behavior, Du Bois Review, Psychological Sciences, and Journal of Applied Psychology. In 2022, he co-edited Public Opinion Quarterly's special issue on "Race, Justice, and Public Opinion."

Prior to UC Berkeley, Dean Wilson served as a Senior Associate Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and Associate Dean of the Social Sciences, at the University of Delaware. He also served as a statistical researcher at the Gallup Polling Organization in Washington, DC. H earned a BA (government) from Western Kentucky University, and an MPA (policy analysis) and PhD (political science), from Michigan State University.