Master of Arts Theses, 2007

Wesleyan's competitive graduate program includes prior undergrads receiving a Master's degree in their fifth year as well as students from other schools completing the program.

Ethnic Differences in Weight Control Practices among U.S. Adolescents from 1995 to 2005
                Yu-hsuen M. Chao

Background: Because of a proliferation of media images of ethnic minority models with unrealistic bodies and growing pressure on ethnic minority individuals to conform to White beauty ideals, we explored ethnic differences in trends in weight control practices among adolescents from 1995 to 2005. Method: The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) biennially assesses dieting, diet product use, purging, and exercise among nationally representative samples of 10,904 to 16,262 U.S. high school students obtained through 3-stage cluster sampling. Results: The prevalence of all weight control behaviors among male adolescents showed significant linear increases during the decade. Black females were less likely than Hispanic females, who were less likely than White females, to practice weight control. White males were less likely than Black males, who were less likely than Hispanic males, to practice weight control. The ethnic differences in weight control practices are consistent across time. Discussion: Contrary to expectations, Black females appear to continue to resist social and media pressure to pursue thinness. On the other hand, all male adolescents are at increasing risk for developing eating disorder symptomatology. In light of rising obesity rates, future research needs to differentiate healthy weight control practices from unhealthy weight control practices.

Theories of Socialization: Politics, Textbooks and the Soviets
                Jenna St. Martin

The meaning of the term "socialization" has been used in political, sociological and psychological writings since the late 1800s. "Socializationž as a word and a concept has been a slippery and mutable object within the social sciences, open to multiple interpretations and susceptible to manipulation. Although theories of socialization remain commonplace in academic and popular culture, few synthetic analyses or histories have been devoted to the topic. "Socialization," as it has commonly been used in the social sciences, names a psychological process that American social scientists considered discernable, researchable and theorizable. To approach it as such, as a natural category, would be to perpetuate what Kurt Danziger calls the "arrogance" of twentiethcentury American psychology: The presumption that psychology's terms and concepts transparently and unproblematically map experiences in the world. Instead, we need to consider how "socialization," and the theories posited to explain it, are products of western social science and may or may not describe an essential (trans-historical and universal) phenomenon. In the thesis, the history of the meaning of this concept is traced in relation to historical events, its inherently paradoxical meanings are investigated, and its life in psychology textbooks is examined. The thesis includes a case study of American theories of Soviet socialization during the Cold War as an illustration of the political and cultural dimensions of purportedly objective research on socialization.

To Choose or Not to Choose: The Effects of Conflict and Risk on Choice Deferral
                Steven M. Wengrovitz

When making decisions, people are often faced not only with a choice among available alternatives, but also with the option of deferring choice. Two factors have been shown to influence the likelihood of choice deferral, namely, choice difficulty and deferral related risk. Here, we consider the interaction between these two factors. Choice difficulty is operationalized as the presence versus absence of a dominant alternative in a two-option set. Risk is operationalized as the likelihood that only less desirable alternatives will be available after deferral. In two experiments, we find that the likelihood of in choice deferral is highly influenced by degree of risk when a decision is "easy," but has little influence when a decision is "difficult." The results suggest that people may have trouble integrating deferral-related risk information when making difficult choices.

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