Convection in the upper mantle can give rise to normal stresses on the base of the continental lithosphere that may cause localized elevation of its surface and extensional deviatoric stresses. This possibility is investigated assuming homogeneous, biaxial strain in a continental lithosphere whose strength is governed by a combination of brittle failure and power law creep in the crust and by brittle, power law, or Dorn law behavior in the mantle. For a given geotherm and for rheologies based on current laboratory data, the lithosphere responds to convection-induced uplift in one of three ways, depending primarily on the magnitude of the driving stresses. These regimes are as follows: (1) When the driving stress exceeds a threshold value, the resulting strain rates are high enough (greater than about 3¿10-16 s-1) that the lithosphere strains almost isothermally, its effective rheology is strain thinning, and it undergoes accelerating extension. The magnitude of the dynamic uplift required to produce the threshold value of the driving stress depends on the geotherm (characterized here by the Moho temperature) and varies from about 1 km for a Moho temperature of 700¿C to around 3 km for a Moho temperature of 550¿C; an uncertainty of at least 100¿C is attached to these temperatures owing to the inaccuracies in extrapolating laboratory data to geological strain rates. (2) At stress levels due to less than about half of the critical uplift, extensional strain is negligible. (3) At intermediate stress levels, moderate uplift produces extension that is bounded by strength increases due to cooling of the ductile portion of the lithosphere during extension.