Tiffany Lightbourn, Assistant Professor, Psychology

B.A., Beloit College; M.A., Ph.D., University of Michigan

Tiffany Lightbourn earned her doctorate in Social Psychology in April 2000 from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. While at the University she was a National Science Foundation graduate fellow and received an American Psychological Association Dissertation Research Award.

Dr. Lightbourn's work focuses on prejudice and discrimination in a global context. She was recently selected to be a 2002-2003 Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California – San Diego. While at the Center she will be investigating how asylum officers think about who has a credible fear of persecution and the situational and cultural influences on the decisions they render. This project examines INS asylum offices to evaluate how experience (on-the job training, work routines, and cases), beliefs (schemas), and bias (stereotypes) influence the ability of asylum officers to judge the credibility of applicants for asylum.

Her other line of research looks at how anti-immigrant sentiment develops and manifests itself within the context of the Caribbean. Her dissertation was entitled "When Diasporas Discriminate: Identity Choices and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in the Bahamas." Her dissertation examined growing anti-Haitian prejudice in the Bahamas as a function of national, regional, and racial identification and the ways this prejudice is expressed in national media, public discourse, and policy attitudes.

Dr. Lightbourn's teaching interests include social psychology, cross-cultural psychology, the psychology of migration, and prejudice and discrimination. She teaches a seminar in Prejudice, Discrimination and Social Policy in the program.