Alison P Lenton studied Women's Studies as an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Barbara before moving on to do postgraduate work in social psychology at California State University, Long Beach (MA) and the University of Colorado at Boulder (MA, PhD). After gaining her doctorate, she worked as a Lecturer in the Department of Social and Developmental Psychology at Cambridge University. She has been a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh since 2004.
Her research interests are varied and include: 1) social judgements and decision making (recent studies investigate context effects on mate choice); 2) prejudice and stereotyping (her latest paper is a meta-analysis investigating the degree to which stereotype reduction strategies mitigate automatic gender stereotypes); and 3) situational influences on "the self" (a new line of research investigates whether authenticity can be induced as a state). Dr Lenton's research has been cited in the media and she has appeared as an on-camera scientist-expert for a BBC science programme.