Donna Garcia

Donna Garcia was a CIFAR Junior Fellow from September 2008 to August 2009, working under the supervision of Successful Societies Fellow Leanne Son Hing in the Department of Psychology, University of Guelph.  She is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at California State University in San Bernardino.  Donna received her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Kansas under thesis advisor Nyla Branscombe in 2006.  She also holds an Honours B.A. in Psychology from Wilfrid Laurier University (1999) and an M.A. in Applied Social Psychology from the University of Guelph (2001).  From 2006-2008, Donna held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, with supervisor Victoria Esses.  Past awards have included doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).  

Donna’s program of research focuses on the self-perpetuating nature of social inequality via its effects on human functioning (e.g., motivation, achievement, self-regulation, and psychological and physiological well-being). She is specifically interested in the impact that inequality has on psycho-social processes, which in turn impair the successful functioning of low status group members, but often enhance the functioning of those from high status groups. Her investigation of the effects of social inequality involves three separate but related areas: (1) the psycho-social mechanisms underlying the relationship between social inequality and successful human functioning, (2) the social pressures that discourage low status group members from challenging personal experiences with discrimination, and (3) the self-fulfilling role of cultural oppression on behaviour.