At Gonville & Caius College, an emphasis is placed on the benefits of communal dining. For Kirsten Thomas (Psychology PhD 2023), an MCR Dining Officer, this extends to her academic work.
Kirsten’s PhD, funded by a Gonville Research Studentship and the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), explores the social factors around diet choices and eating behaviours in adolescents, roughly between the ages of 10 and 24.
This follows on from her work as a Research Assistant at the Blakemore Lab within the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, where she is now carrying out her PhD research (as well as at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit). There she investigated the impact of social isolation on adolescent behaviour, including how the influence of peers can affect risk perception.
“A lot of work on social influence is about perception of risk, but I wanted to know if this phenomenon of peer influence susceptibility in adolescence occurs across other kinds of behaviour as well,” says Kirsten. “I find diet a really interesting one because eating with other people is such a social behaviour; it’s not just energy in, energy out.
“There’s quite a lot of research from a behavioural epidemiology perspective which shows that the social environment is very important when we choose what we eat, how much we eat, when we eat and so on. But I wanted to know, from a more psychological or behavioural perspective, whether experimentally manipulating that environment would change how likely someone is to eat a certain thing, to make healthier or less healthy choices.”
Kirsten is planning an experimental study modelled on her experience of researching social influence on risk perception.
She adds: “There’s a computerised task where you ask an adolescent participant to rate on a scale how risky they think a situation is. You then show them the purported average risk rating from other people their age, then ask them to rate the same scenario again. You are interested in seeing how much their rating shifts after seeing their peer group norm.
“I want to adapt that for diet choices, so asking how much people want to eat or drink a certain food or drink type, then seeing if it changes after showing them how much their peers want to eat or drink it.”
Kirsten’s interest in food and its social contexts does not end with her research. Since October 2024 she has been one of the MCR Dining Officers at Caius, and she has greatly enjoyed overseeing the College’s dining events.
“I think out of all the MCR Committee roles, Dining Officer is the most fun because you get to be creative,” she says. “You get to organise a lot of the key events, and that can be so much fun.
“I enjoy dining and the general experience of eating with other people. It’s something that I’m interested in anyway and then it’s also formed part of my research.
“Caius not only provides these experiences but encourages them with the MDR (Minimum Dining Requirement). I’ve always really liked the dining events at Caius – the Formals, the Superhalls, everything that brings the community together to eat.”
