Change and Stability in Active and Passive Social Influence Dynamics During Natural Drinking Events: A Longitudinal Measurement-Burst Study

Abstract

We examined the link between social norms and active social influences occurring during natural social drinking contexts. Across 4 yearly measurement-bursts, college students (N = 523) reported daily for 30-day periods on drinking norms, drinking offers, how many drinks they accepted, and personal drinking levels during social drinking events. In contexts where drinking norms were higher, students were more likely to both receive and comply with drinking offers. These acute social influences were highly stable throughout college, but affected men and women differently across time: Women received more drinking offers than men, especially at the beginning of college and when norms were higher, but men complied with more drinking offers per occasion. These effects were not attributable to between-person differences in social drinking motives or drinking levels, nor to within-person patterns of situation-selection. The present work suggests that context-specific drinking norms catalyze active social influence attempts, and further promote compliance drinking.

Multiple Mechanisms Influencing the Relationship Between Alcohol Consumption and Peer Alcohol Use

“…Evidence of social influence has been reported among longitudinal studies of college students (Cullum et al, 2012) and adolescents (Urberg et al, 1997; Wills and Cleary, 1999). Others have reported reciprocal effects between one’s own drinking and that of one’s peers.…”

“…Two basic, complementary causal mechanisms (Caspi, 2002) have been proposed to explain the association between one’s own drinking and that of one’s peers: social selection and social influence . Individuals are capable of selecting peers based on their own drinking behaviors; they also might modify their own drinking behavior in response to peer influences (Bauman and Ennett, 1994; Cullum et al, 2012; Henry et al, 2005; Kiuru et al, 2010). The terms selection and influence have different denotations across studies.…”

“…Still other research suggests that, when controlling for social selection, social influence is largely inconsequential (Mundt et al, 2012). Not all studies explicitly model both selection and influence (e.g., (Cullum et al, 2012), and interpretation of results is complicated if selection is not controlled for when examining influence (Bauman and Ennett, 1994; Bauman and Ennett, 1996; Jaccard et al, 2005; Madden et al, 2002; Urberg et al, 1997). …”

Social drinking groups and risk experience in nightclubs: latent class analysis

“…Inter-group interactions may also increase risks, such as competition between male patrons for the attention of women (Graham, Wells, Bernards, & Dennison, 2010; Wells, Graham, & Tremblay, 2009). Social norms created by the collective social groups can also increase alcohol consumption (Cullum, O’Grady, Armeli, & Tennen, 2012a). …”

A descriptive analysis of where and with whom lesbian versus bisexual women drink

“…Specifically, no published studies have examined the proportion of LGBTQ versus heterosexual individuals in different drinking locations, but evidence suggests that gay/lesbian individuals tend to drink in settings with other sexual minorities, while bisexual individuals tend to drink in mixed settings (Trocki & Drabble, 2008). Given that drinking is influenced by the extent to which it is perceived as normative and acceptable (Cullum, O’Grady, Armeli, & Tennen, 2012; Thombs et al, 1997), identifying where and with whom SMW drink can improve our understanding of contextual influences on drinking and, in turn, inform prevention and intervention efforts. Finally, research has focused on lesbians (Parks, Hughes, & Kinnison, 2007) or SMW (Condit et al, 2011) without examining differences between lesbians and bisexual women.…”