Coping motives and negative affect: An ecological study of the antecedents of alcohol craving and alcohol use.

Abstract

Objective: Negative affect (NA) is presumed to be an important trigger for drinking, particularly among coping-motivated drinkers. However, diary studies attempting to predict alcohol use from interactions between state NA and coping motives have proved inconsistent. Craving or momentary desire for alcohol may be a more proximal and robust consequence of NA in coping-motivated drinkers. Method: Data were drawn from an ecological momentary assessment investigation. Frequent drinkers (N = 403) carried electronic diaries for 21 consecutive days, recording their drinking behavior, and rating cravings for alcohol and NA. Results: Outside of active drinking episodes, within-person elevations of momentary NA were associated with increased craving intensity, and this effect was more prominent among drinkers with higher dispositional coping motives. There was no significant interaction between coping motives and momentary NA in predicting the occurrence and amount of same-day alcohol use. Significant conditional indirect effects indicated that NA promoted drinking through increases in craving. These indirect effects were stronger among drinkers reporting higher coping motives. Conclusions: Coping motives and within-person fluctuations in NA interactively predict alcohol craving. NA promotes drinking indirectly via increased craving, particularly among coping-motivated drinkers. Alcohol craving may be a proximal and sensitive response channel for investigating interactions between affective distress and coping motives. Public Health Significance StatementThis study found that increases in the negative mood are associated with increased alcohol craving, particularly among drinkers who report stronger dispositional motives to drink to cope with negative moods. In turn, these increases in craving predicted subsequent alcohol use. The craving may be a useful outcome for investigating the interplay among distal drinking motives, situational instigators, and alcohol use.

The daily association between affect and alcohol use: A meta-analysis of individual participant data

“…Recent research has suggested that peoples' daily or momentary coping and enhancement motives for drinking are robust predictors of same day emotional drinking (Stevenson et al, 2019;Votaw & Witkiewitz, 2021). Other cognitive factors, such as cravings (Serre et al, 2015;Waddell et al, 2021), the momentary reinforcement value of alcohol (Murphy & Mackillop, 2006), and other drinking-related cognitions (Lewis et al, 2020) have been shown to vary within person and may be important for understanding how drinking motives are enacted to influence alcohol use in daily and momentary data.…”

No evidence for trait- and state-level urgency moderating the daily association between negative affect and subsequent alcohol use in two college samples

“…For studies that found daily associations between increased negative affect and alcohol use, heavy or hazardous drinking levels was often an inclusion criteria ( Armeli et al, 2000 ; Mohr et al, 2008 ; Simons et al, 2005 ). Studies that did not find effects typically had fewer drinking inclusion criteria ranging from once a month to twice a week ( Dvorak et al, 2018 ; O’Donnell et al, 2019 ; Stevenson et al, 2019 ; Waddell et al, 2021 ), which may suggest that this effect is more likely to be found among those engaging in heavy or hazardous drinking. Furthermore, these studies show considerable heterogeneity in the number and kind of items used to assess negative affect ( Dvorak et al, 2014 ; Mohr et al, 2013 ) as well as the data analytic strategy ( O’Donnell et al, 2019 ; Rankin and Maggs, 2006 ).…”

Affect and alcohol consumption: An ecological momentary assessment study during national lockdown.

“…Contrary to our first hypotheses, affect fluctuations (positive and negative) were not significantly associated with consumption. When we operationalized affect fluctuation in an alternative way (as the deviations of each momentary rating from the person-mean, following Waddell et al, 2021, see Supplemental Materials), the results were identical. While inconsistent with previous findings suggesting that fluctuations in affect predict consumption patterns among adolescents (Gottfredson & Hussong, 2013) and moderate to heavy drinkers (Mohr et al, 2015), this does accord with research from Peacock et al (2015), whose study (akin to ours) was conducted using a general population of adult drinkers.…”

“…Specifically, in contrast to efforts that largely focused on mean levels of negative affect (Bresin & Fairbairn, 2019; Cyders et al, 2010; Dinc & Cooper, 2015), there is emerging evidence indicating that negative affect fluctuation may play a significant role in shaping alcohol consumption. This is illustrated by findings suggesting that people who experience negative mood fluctuations during the day may be more prone to drinking compared to those whose mood is consistently low (Gottfredson & Hussong, 2013; Mohr et al, 2015; Waddell et al, 2021). A similar tendency has also been found with regard to fluctuations in positive affect, such that positive affect variability appears to be a stronger and independent predictor of consumption than mean levels of affect (Mohr et al, 2015).…”