Alcohol outcome expectancies and drinking to cope with social situations

Abstract

Repeated use of alcohol as a coping strategy to reduce anxiety or discomfort increases one's risk of developing alcohol dependence. Previous studies have found alcohol outcome expectancies (AOE) strongly predict drinking behavior, in general, and also are related to drinking to cope. The purpose of the current study was to examine AOE that may be related to drinking to cope with discomfort in social situations. It was hypothesized that positive AOE, especially related to assertion and tension reduction, would be most associated with drinking to cope with social situations. Fifty-six community volunteers from a larger study on attentional bias and drinking to cope were divided into high (n = 36) and low (n = 20) drinking to cope groups following completion of a questionnaire battery. Findings indicated AOE were well able to classify drinking to cope status, with 91% of cases correctly classified. As hypothesized, assertion and tension reduction AOE uniquely contributed to the discriminant function in classifying drinking to cope groups. These findings have implications for the prevention and treatment of alcohol use disorders and suggest that AOE should be further investigated as potential moderators of the relationship between social anxiety and alcohol use disorders. KeywordsAlcohol expectancies; Drinking to cope; Social anxiety; Alcohol consumption Many individuals report the frequent and deliberate use of alcohol to cope with social discomfort (e.g., Thomas, Randall, & Carrigan, 2003), a behavior that is known to increase one's risk of developing alcohol dependence (Kushner, Sher, & Beitman, 1990). Coping motives for drinking emerged as important predictors of drinking behavior for college students with moderate or high levels of social anxiety (Ham, Bonin, & Hope, 2007). Consistent with this self-report data, socially anxious participants self-administered more alcohol following a speech challenge versus a neutral task (Abrams, Kushner, Medina, & Voight, 2002). Additionally, college students consumed more alcohol during a socially stressful session than during a neutral session, particularly those with high trait social anxiety and males who expected alcohol to increase assertiveness (Kidorf & Lang, 1999 Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. The beliefs people hold about the effects of consuming alcohol are referred to as alcohol outcome expectancies (AOE; Goldman, Del Boca, & Darkes, 1999). It has been established that AOE correlate with alcohol consumption (e.g., Goldman et al., 1999), account for variance in symptoms of alcohol dependence above an...

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