Sheri Johnson

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Sheri L. Johnson is an American psychologist who serves as a Distinguished Professor and Chancellor's Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a fellow of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Johnson did her undergraduate work at Salem College and earned her PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, where her 1986 thesis studied inconsistent communication. She did a postdoctoral fellowship at Brown University and was appointed an assistant professor there in 1993. In 1995 she joined the University of Miami to teach psychology. Her research aims to identify factors that predict depression and mania, with a focus on bipolar disorder. Her work on mania shows that reward sensitivity and goal engagement increase in bipolar disorder. She has also studied emotion-related impulsivity, finding it is linked to problems such as aggression and suicide. Johnson joined the University of California, Berkeley as a professor of psychology in 2008, and was named Distinguished Professor in 2021 and Chancellor's Professor in 2022. She develops new interventions for bipolar disorder and has collaborated with the Wellcome Trust to explore how healthy lifestyles influence bipolar outcomes, recognizing that physical health can affect the illness.