Alcohol expectancies and the risk for alcoholism.

Abstract

The current study examined alcohol expectancies and drinking motives as correlates of alcohol involvement among adolescents at high and low risk for future alcoholism. Measures of alcohol expectancies, drinking motives, presumed personality risk for alcoholism, family history of alcoholism, and alcohol involvement were completed by 979 high school students. Alcohol expectancies and drinking motives were found to vary as a function of risk status. More important, the strength of the relations between alcohol expectancies or drinking motives and alcohol involvement varied as a function of risk status. Expectancies of altered social behavior were particularly associated with low-risk drinking. Expectancies of enhanced cognitive and motor functioning, expectancies of tension reduction, expectancies of deteriorated cognitive and behavioral functioning, personal motives, and power motives were particularly associated with high-risk drinking. These expectancies and motives are of potential prognostic significance in the development of alcoholism and may be important targets for modification in primary prevention programs.Alcohol use is extremely common in adolescence. Recent surveys show that a substantial majority of adolescents (80%-93%) have reported at least some experience with alcohol (Jalali, Jalali, Crocetti, & Turner, 1981;Johnston, O'Malley, & Bachman, 1984). This high prevalence of adolescent alcohol use suggests that drinking in this age period is a socially normative behavior. The onset of drinking in adolescence may be part of a normal process of internalizing social norms and experimenting with adult behaviors (Barnes, 1977). For many adolescents, drinking can be considered a normal, social, transitional behavior that does not necessarily call for clinical concern or intervention.However, although some alcohol use is normative, adolescent drinking can also be problematic. It is important to distinguish normal adolescent drinking from drinking that has clinical implications. Most previous research has distinguished normal adolescent drinking from adolescent problem drinking by the quantity and frequency of use combined with the negative social consequences of alcohol intake (e.g., traffic accidents, school failure, family problems; Mayer & Filstead, 1979). Adolescent problem drinkers are one obvious target group for clini-This study is based on a master's thesis conducted by the first author at the University of Missouri-Columbia under the supervision of the second author.

Alcohol attention bias in adolescent social drinkers: an eye tracking study

“…The results indicated more positive expectancies regarding improved cognitive and motor skills and global positive changes, similar to studies examining expectancies in adolescents with at-risk of alcohol misuse (Mann, Chassin & Sher, 1987;Brown, Creamer & Stetson, 1987;Christiansen & Goldman, 1983). However, this study focused on social drinkers and therefore cannot be compared directly to a sample of at-risk adolescents.…”

The Reciprocal Influences of Perceived Risk for Alcoholism and Alcohol Use Over Time: Evidence for Aversive Transmission of Parental Alcoholism

“…Few studies have examined the relations between alcohol use and perceived risk for alcoholism-a type of distal negative expectancy. Studies on the relations between negative expectancies and alcohol use have had mixed results (Mann et al, 1987;McMahon et al, 1994;Sharkansky and Finn, 1998), perhaps because these relations are different in the long term than in the short term. Although we did not test the shortterm effects of perceived risk for alcoholism, our fi ndings with a 5-year time lag between assessments indicate inverse relations between perceived risk and drinking over time.…”

Similarities and Differences of Longitudinal Phenotypes Across Alternate Indices of Alcohol Involvement: A Methodologic Comparison of Trajectory Approaches.

“…Drinking to regulate negative affect (e.g., tension reduction) robustly predicts alcohol use and problems (Cooper, Frone, Russell, & Mudar, 1995;Mann, Chassin, & Sher, 1987). In the only study to examine the association between reasons for drinking and course of alcohol involvement, Bennett et al (1999) showed that persistent and developmentally limited courses of drinking tended to have the highest escape and enhance reasons for use, followed by moderate (and low) groups.…”