Abstract
Alcohol expectancies are consistently associated with alcohol use in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. However, little research has examined whether alcohol expectancies on specific drinking occasions are associated with reported consequences on those days, particularly when controlling for the amount of alcohol consumed, thus differentiating the extent to which reported consequences may have resulted from alcohol or an "expectancy effect. " This study examined consequence-specific daily expectancy effects. College students (N = 342; mean age 19.7 [standard deviation (SD) = 1.25], 52.9% female) participated in a longitudinal measurement burst study. During four 2-week intervals, participants used mobile phones to respond to 3 surveys per day via automated telephone interviews. The results showed that on days when college students had higher-than-average expectancies for specific subjective positive consequences (e.g., feeling more relaxed, being in a better mood), they were more likely to report experiencing those same consequences as a result of their alcohol use that day, even after controlling for how much they actually drank on that day. The same held true for subjective interpersonal negative consequences (e.g., becoming aggressive, rude, or obnoxious; embarrassing oneself), but not for less subjective physical/cognitive negative consequences (e.g., having a hangover, vomiting, getting hurt/ injured, forgetting). The results suggest that one's expectations about the particular effects of alcohol tend to be self-fulfilling for subjective effects of alcohol even when they are not directly tied to the physiological effects of alcohol. The findings underscore the important role of alcohol expectancies, particularly the expectation of subjective positive social and tension-reduction/relaxation effects, in understanding problematic alcohol use.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 327-334 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Psychology of Addictive Behaviors |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Data collection and manuscript preparation were supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (R01AA016979, principal investigator [PI]: Christine M. Lee). The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institutes of Health, the Uniformed Services University, or the Department of Defense. The overarching ideas, data, and analyses in the current manuscript were presented as a poster at the 2018 annual meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism, June 16-20, 2018, San Diego, California.
Funding Information:
Data collection and manuscript preparation were supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (R01 AA016979, principal investigator [PI]: Christine M. Lee). The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institutes of Health, the Uniformed Services University, or the Department of Defense.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 American Psychological Association.
Keywords
- Alcohol
- College students
- Expectancy
- Negative consequences
- Positive consequences
- Humans
- Alcoholic Intoxication/psychology
- Male
- Universities
- Young Adult
- Students
- Adolescent
- Adult
- Female
- Alcohol Drinking in College/psychology
- Longitudinal Studies
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article
