Enhancement motives moderate the relationship between high‐arousal positive moods and drinking quantity: Evidence from a 22‐day experience sampling study

Abstract

We demonstrated that high enhancement-motivated drinkers exhibit a high, stable drinking level, regardless of the intensity of their high-arousal positive mood. In contrast, low enhancement-motivated drinkers decrease their drinking when in a high-arousal positive mood state. Clinicians may be able to help reduce heavy alcohol consumption in enhancement-motivated drinkers by teaching them to reduce their drinking when in a high-arousal positive mood state.

Assessment of Alcohol Use in the Natural Environment

“…At each assessment, participants reported how many drinks they had consumed since the last report. Gautreau and colleagues () prompted participants at random times within 2‐hour periods from 4 pm to 4 am , asking participants to provide a running tally of drinks for the current day at each prompt. Suffoletto and colleagues () prompted participants hourly between 8 pm and 12 am on Friday and Saturday nights, collecting reports of the number of drinks consumed since the preceding assessment.…”

“…However, these goals were typically not those driving the design of these studies. The existing studies sought to establish the intraday temporal precedence of theoretically relevant triggers in the predrinking period (e.g., mood states, motives) and characterize the occurrence and intensity of subsequent drinking (Dvorak et al., , ; Gautreau et al., ) or to capture variations in eBAC as criterion data against which to validate algorithms for passive detection of drinking (Gharani et al., ; Suffoletto et al., ). The high‐frequency sampling designs were well‐suited to addressing these aims.…”

“…Some studies using this approach include scheduled prompts extending into the late night or early morning to capture extended drinking. In these studies, participants are instructed to ignore prompts occurring after bedtime (Gautreau et al., ) or provided with a method for muting alarms (Dvorak et al., , ).…”

“…This is because many (perhaps most) prompts will be delivered when participants are not actively drinking. On the other hand, frequent assessment of nondrinking or predrinking states may be desirable for other research questions (e.g., Dvorak et al., ; Gautreau et al., ).…”

“…Completion rates for timed follow‐ups are typically good, with estimates ranging from 84 to 93% in samples of young adults and psychiatric outpatients (e.g., Lane et al., ; Luczak et al., ; Piasecki et al., ). High‐frequency sampling studies have reported response rates to signaled prompts ranging from 63 to 90% in college student samples (Dvorak et al., , ; Gautreau et al., ).…”