Perceived Drinking Norms, Attention to Social Comparison Information, and Alcohol Use Among College Students

Abstract Numerous studies indicate that normative campus drinking practices are important in determining college undergraduates' use and abuse of alcohol. The purpose of this paper was to extend this literature by assessing the extent to which a dispositional susceptibility to peer influence, measured using the Attention to Social Comparison Information subscale (Lennox & Wolfe, 1984), moderates this relationship. Consistent with prior research, the perception that alcohol use and abuse are common campus activities was associated with high levels of drinking across students. Attention to social comparison information also had a direct positive effect on alcohol consumption among the undergraduates surveyed. Moreover, as we predicted, students high in attention to social comparison information who believed other individuals on campus to be frequent and heavy users of alcohol reported the highest levels of drinking. These findings are interpreted with reference to the utility of both information-and resistance-based alcohol-prevention strategies. ********** High rate of alcohol-related crimes, accidents and other problem behaviors on college campuses have led school administrators to implement a range of initiatives designed to reduce undergraduate drinking (Abbey, 1991; Scott, Schafer, & Greenfield, 1999; Wechsler, Davenport, Dowdall, Moeykens, & Castillo, 1994). Despite this, recent reports indicate that the vast majority of college undergraduates use alcohol, and that nearly half of all students routinely engage in heavy, or binge drinking (Wechsler, Lee, Kuo & Lee, 2000). Perceived Drinking Norms While colleges and universities often have a number of characteristics that promote these patterns (Gonzales, 1987), perceptions of campus drinking norms continually emerge as one of the strongest determinants of undergraduates' drinking practices. Across analyses, students who believe alcohol use and binge drinking to be common place at their college or university consistently reported engaging in the highest rates of these activities (Baer, Stacy, & Larimer, 1991; Perkins & Berkowitz, 1986; Perkins & Wechsler, 1996; Wood, Nagoshi & Dennis, 1992). This is an especially notable finding since students tend to overestimate both the amount of alcohol consumed by other individuals on campus and the proportion of their peers who drink heavily (Baer et al., 1991; Perkins & Berkowitz, 1986; Perkins, Meilman, Leichliter, Cashin & Presley, 1999). Insofar as students use beliefs about others' alcohol consumption to gauge the appropriateness of their own drinking, their misconceptions about peers' use of alcohol may contribute significantly to the alcohol "problem" described earlier. If heavy drinkers overestimate the magnitude of others' alcohol use, they may fail to recognize their own drinking as hazardous or aberrant (Baer, et al., 1991), or they may more readily justify their potentially harmful behavior (Baer, et al., 1991; Perkins & Berkowitz, 1986, Wechsler & Kuo, 2000). Students who see heavy drinking as a normative activity may also increase their levels of alcohol consumption in order to gain social acceptance and avoid negative peer evaluations (Baer, et al., 1991; Perkins & Wechsler, 1996). Susceptibility to Situational Influence Although students frequently report that social concerns affect their drinking (Kriegler, Baldwin & Scott, 1994; Lo, 1995), individuals may vary in their vulnerability to these kinds of pressures. The concept of self-monitoring (Snyder, 1974; 1979) was initially developed as a measure of dispositional susceptibility to situational influences like these across social contexts. Self-monitoring refers to the extent to which individuals base their behaviors on internal factors or dispositional traits (low self-monitors) as opposed to external, situational constraints (high self-monitors). …