Public self-consciousness, pre-loading and drinking harms among university students

Abstract

Acknowledgements:We are grateful to the participants for giving up their time and to Sarah Hennelly for collecting the data. Funding: This project was funded by the Oxford Brookes University Central Research Fund. Word count: 4989 Statement of contribution: ED conceived the study, developed the measures, and analysed the open ended questions. AP searched for literature and drafted sections of the introduction and results. ED and AP jointly analysed the data and together wrote manuscript drafts and agreed on the final version of the manuscript. Conflicts of interest:The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Biographies:Emma L Davies is a senior lecturer in psychology at Oxford Brookes University.Aspasia E Paltoglou is a lecturer in psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University.Public self-consciousness, pre-loading and student drinking Public self-consciousness, pre-loading and drinking harms among university students ABSTRACT Background: Social anxiety and self-consciousness are associated with alcohol-related problems in students. The practice of pre-loading is one avenue for exploration regarding this relationship. Individuals may pre-load to reduce social anxiety and feel more confident when socialising, which could lead to the increased harms experienced. The current study aimed to explore reasons for pre-loading, and whether public and private self-consciousness and social anxiety were related to pre-loading, increased drinking and harms. Method:Prospective study with four-week follow up of 325 UK students aged 18-30 years old.Participants completed measures of private and public self-consciousness, social anxiety, alcohol consumption, alcohol-related harms and pre-loading.Results: Financial motives and mood-related reasons, such as gaining confidence were reported as reasons for pre-loading. Pre-loading predicted hazardous alcohol consumption, but social anxiety, and public and private self-consciousness did not. However, pre-loading, public selfconsciousness and social anxiety predicted alcohol-related harms. Furthermore, public selfconsciousness mediated the relationship between pre-loading and harms in a positive direction and this appeared to be more relevant in high risk (AUDIT 8+) than low risk drinkers. Conclusion:Students who scored higher in public self-consciousness appeared to be at greater risk of harms from pre-loading. Further research should examine this relationship further with particular attention to high risk drinkers, and explore which aspects of a night out are related to heightened self-consciousness. Interventions could incorporate measures to reduce public selfconsciousness, in order to reduce the negative impacts of pre-loading.Public self-consciousness, pre-loading and student drinking Public self-consciousness, pre-loading and drinking harms among university students

Self-Awareness in research: From its functional constituents to investigation models

“…More notorious examples are found in the research on the relationship between self-consciousness and symptoms of depression and anxiety in clinical and non-clinical populations (Burns et al, 2019;Panayiotou et al, 2020;Senín-Calderón et al, 2017). In addition, many investigations have focused on examining the psychological variables in relation to a specific facet of self-consciousness, as in the case of the relationship between aggressive behavior and private self-consciousness (Sohn et al, 2019), between public self-consciousness and alcohol consumption among college's students (Davies & Paltoglou, 2019), and the relationship between social anxiety and driving behavior among bus and taxi drivers (Huang et al, 2018).…”

Factors that influence mental health of university and college students in the UK: a systematic review

“…The majority of included studies (n = 22) were cross-sectional surveys. Nine studies (10 publications) [35,36,39,41,43,[50][51][52][53]62] were longitudinal in design, recording survey data at different time points to explore changes in the variables being measured. The duration of time that these studies covered ranged from 19 weeks to 12 years.…”

Drink for drink: measurement of preloading motivations for field and survey research with correlates of alcohol related harms

“…If preloading behaviours are conceptually different to general drinking behaviours, the harms resulting from preloading may also be conceptually unique. Such preloading specific harms are linked to the NED, the night-out and succeeding days -e.g., assaults, unwanted/ unprotected sex, embarrassing oneself while out and on social media (Barton & Husk, 2014;Davies & Paltoglou, 2019;Haas et al, 2017). The AUDIT measures alcohol use quantity, frequency and harms and lacks specificity to account for the variance attributed by preloading.…”