Assistant Professor of Psychology Todd F. Heatherton tortures dieters in the name of science.

Take the following scene from one of Heatherton's experiments Sad, mournful music fills the air. Several gallons of delicious Baskin Robbins ice cream sit on the table, ready to be devoured.

Heatherton tells the unsuspecting Harvard undergraduate who is the experiment's subject that in ten minutes she will be speaking in front of large crowd. Heatherton then leaves the students in the room to face the tempting ice cream.

This is one of several experiments Heatherton has used at Harvard as part of a ten-year study of students' eating habits. From the study, Heatherton has concluded that there are two types of people that are unable to regulate their eating properly.

One type are the "ones who feel like they've blown their diets and say `what the heck' to eating a large amount of food," says Heatherton, the popular Psychology 1 teacher who will leave the University for Dartmouth atthe end of the year please see related sotry,page1).

Heatherton's studies have concluded that morethan 70 percent of Harvard women want to lose atleast ten pounds.

"This figure has actually been dropping offover the past ten years," Heatherton says. "Also,more than half of students are actively on somesort of diet."

Heatherton says students here may not becompletely representative of the generalpopulation because "a Harvard students tends to bea perfectionist which spills over into eatingpatterns."

And because of heightened academic and socialpressures, youth and generally high socio-economicstatus, Harvard undergraduates are at high risk ofhaving eating disorders, Heatherton says.

Roughly 20 percent of college women haveserious eating problems, the full-figuredHeatherton says. These problems include bingeeating, intense preoccupation with food,over-exercising, skipping meals and vomiting.

"My interest has really been with what causesthe binge eating," Heatherton says.

To put his theories to the test, Heathertonconducted what he calls a taste perception study.Two groups of undergraduates were used in theexperiment.

In the first group, which was used as acontrol, students were placed individually inrooms with several gallons of Baskin Robbins icecream.

With this group, Heatherton found logicalresults: dieters tended to eat less ice cream andnon-dieters tended to eat more.

In the second experimental group, Heathertonfed each subject what he says was "a rich, huge,sixteen ounce double thick chocolate milkshake,"He then placed the undergraduates in front oflarge amounts of ice cream.

Heatherton's subjects produced the exactopposite results of the first experiment. Dieterswho had eaten the milkshake reasoned that sincethey had already broken their diets, there wasnothing wrong with eating of lots of ice cream,Heatherton says.