Date of Award

8-2025

Degree Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

School

Psychology

Committee Chair

Tammy Greer

Committee Chair School

Psychology

Committee Member 2

Jennifer Lemacks

Committee Member 2 School

Professional Nursing Practice

Committee Member 3

Donald Sacco

Committee Member 3 School

Psychology

Abstract

U.S. laws, policies, and practices have been implemented to reduce forms of overt racism and discrimination. These structural barriers have been effective (e.g., Dovido & Gaertner, 2000; McConahay, 1986; Sue & Sue, 2007). Covert forms of racism, however, including racial microaggressions, are more difficult to address using structural changes and, therefore, continue to thrive (Omi & Winant 1994; Sue et al., 2007). Racist attitudes and discriminatory behaviors are sources of anxiety and stress (Kogan et al., 2014; Pascoe & Richman, 2009) with long-term anxiety and stress leading to elevated risks for mental and physical illnesses, including obesity (Bose et al., 2009; Williams, 2018) that puts individuals at risk for other preventable chronic diseases (Phelan & Link, 2015). Unhealthy dietary choices, as well, are linked to suppression of emotion following stressful events (Leow et al., 2018; Gibson, 2006; Evers et al., 2010). What is not known is whether covert forms of racism and discrimination, particularly experiencing or even just witnessing racial microaggressions, impact dietary choices, and whether healthy versus unhealthy emotion regulation techniques mitigate the impact on dietary choices. Findings from this study indicated that instructions to engage in perseverative thinking compared to expressive writing about a racial microaggression resulted in the consumption of more food by the thinking group. Emotional eating, but not cognitive reappraisal or emotion suppression, interacted with condition such that those who scored higher on emotional eating and who were in the thinking group ate substantially more than other groups.

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