Role of Pregaming Motives in Accounting for Links Between Maladaptive Personality Traits and Drinking Consequences

College students are at heightened risk of engaging in unhealthy alcohol use that leads to negative consequences (e.g., motor vehicle accidents, poor academic performance). Understanding how individual differences, such as maladaptive personality traits, contribute to that risk could improve intervention efforts. A potential pathway through which personality confers risk for consequences is by influencing students’ motivation to drink. In this study of 441 college students, we investigated whether different motivations to pregame, a particularly risky and common drinking practice on college campuses, accounts for links between maladaptive traits and alcohol-related consequences. Results of bivariate analyses showed that all pregaming motives and maladaptive traits (except detachment) were strongly correlated with negative consequences. In path analytic models that adjusted for shared variance between pregaming motives and between maladaptive traits, results showed that traits had indirect effects on total drinking consequences via individual differences in pregaming motives as well as direct effects that were independent of motives. Specifically, antagonism, disinhibition, and negative affectivity predicted more drinking consequences via stronger motives to pregame for instrumental reasons over and above the general motivation to pregame, whereas detachment predicted fewer consequences via weaker instrumental pregaming motives. Antagonism and disinhibition were also associated with more drinking consequences, and detachment with fewer consequences, over and above pregaming motives and general personality problems. Our study indicates that one way maladaptive personality traits may shape alcohol-related consequences in college students is by associations with their motivations to pregame.