Elsevier

Addictive Behaviors

Volume 33, Issue 9, September 2008, Pages 1140-1147
Addictive Behaviors

Childhood predictors of adolescent marijuana use: Early sensation-seeking, deviant peer affiliation, and social images

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2008.04.010Get rights and content

Abstract

This study examined psychosocial mechanisms by which children's early sensation-seeking may influence their later marijuana use. In a longitudinal study, 4th and 5th grade elementary school children (N = 420) were followed until they were in 11th and 12th grades in high school with annual or biennial assessments. Sensation-seeking (assessed over the first 4 assessments) predicted affiliating with deviant peers and level of favorable social images of kids who use marijuana (both assessed over the subsequent 3 assessments). Affiliation with deviant peers and the growth in social images predicted marijuana use in 11th and 12th grades. Affiliation with deviant peers mediated the effect of early sensation-seeking on subsequent marijuana use. The theoretical and applied significance of this influence of early sensation-seeking is discussed.

Introduction

Marijuana use among high school students has declined modestly over the past decade. Nevertheless, in 2006, nearly one half (42.3%) of 12th grade and one third (31.8%) of 10th grade students reported having tried marijuana at least once in their lives (Johnston, O'Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2007). Using marijuana in adolescence is associated with damaging consequences for later health and well-being including lower educational attainment, more high-risk sexual behavior, more delinquent behavior, and more problem use of cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana (e.g., Brook, Balka, & Whiteman, 1999). Identification of psychosocial risk factors that predict marijuana use, and the processes leading to marijuana use, should be valuable for the development of prevention programs to target these mechanisms.

One well-established predictor of adolescents' engagement in risky activities, including substance-use, is sensation-seeking. This trait is defined by individual differences in seeking stimulation in the form of intense, novel sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take risks to obtain this stimulation (Roberti, 2003, Zuckerman, 1994). Levels of sensation-seeking increase in adolescence (Zuckerman, Eysenck, & Eysenck, 1978), which is also the period when risk taking increases (Arnett, 1992). Zuckerman's (1979) prediction that sensation-seeking would be associated with less prevalent and less socially acceptable forms of stimulation, such as substance-use, has been confirmed in subsequent research. Sensation-seeking has predicted adolescent marijuana use in cross-sectional (e.g., Kopstein et al., 2001, Martin et al., 2002) and prospective research (e.g., Crawford et al., 2003, Donohew et al., 1999, Newcomb and McGee, 1991). In a comparative study, sensation-seeking predicted marijuana use more strongly than use of more normative substances such as cigarettes and alcohol (Crawford et al., 2003).

Given that a link between adolescent sensation-seeking and marijuana use is well-established, research is now focusing on the mechanisms that may account for this association. One such mediating mechanism may be affiliation with deviant peers. Peer influence is a strong etiological factor in adolescent substance-use (Bauman and Ennett, 1994, Oetting and Beauvais, 1986, Petraits et al., 1995), and associating with drug-using peers predicts first marijuana use (Kosterman, Hawkins, Guo, Catalano, & Abbott, 2000). Children high in sensation-seeking will seek out environments that provide opportunities for novel, non-normative stimulation, and joining a deviant peer group is one way for sensation seekers to find a niche compatible with their traits (Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005). Indeed, high sensation-seeking adolescents are more likely to associate with deviant peers, who also are likely to be high sensation seekers (Donohew, Hoyle et al., 1999). Furthermore, a recent cross-sectional study found that affiliating with deviant peers mediated the influence of sensation-seeking on adolescents' intentions to use substances (Yanovitsky, 2005).

Because sensation-seeking is related to brain pathways involved in reward (Zuckerman, 1996), mediating mechanisms that incorporate positive affect are also promising candidates (Romer and Hennessy (2007). One affect-based mechanism is found in the Prototype/Willingness Model (Gibbons and Gerrard, 1995, Gibbons et al., 2003, Gibbons et al., 1998). The Prototype/Willingness Model emphasizes an affect-driven, reactive pathway to substance-use initiation as compared to the more planned and reasoned pathway proposed by the Theory of Reasoned Action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980) and the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991). According to the Prototype/Willingness Model, adolescents with more positive beliefs and feelings about other kids who use substances are more willing to try them themselves. These beliefs and feelings are referred to as social images (or “prototypes”); they incorporate evaluative beliefs about typical users (e.g., “cool,” “exciting”) and so have a strong affective component. Consistent with the theory, more favorable social images of substance users in general, and marijuana users specifically, have been associated prospectively with willingness to try and with actual use of substances (e.g., Gibbons, Gerrard, Cleveland, Wills, & Brody, 2004, Wills et al., 2003). Moreover, Andrews and Peterson (2006) and Ge, Jin, Natsuaki, Gibbons, Brody and Cutrona (2006) have shown that children's social images of other kids who use illicit drugs such as marijuana become more favorable over early adolescence.

Integrating the three etiological factors of sensation-seeking, affiliation with deviant peers, and social images suggests the following developmental model. Children high in sensation-seeking will gravitate toward deviant peers and will tend to have more favorable social images of kids who use marijuana. Children who develop more favorable social images of other children who use marijuana, and children who affiliate with deviant peers, will be more likely to try marijuana themselves. This model was tested using Latent Growth Modeling (LGM). LGM is an extension of structural equation modeling that permits the modeling of change over time. In LGM, a latent growth construct is represented by two factors: the intercept (initial level) and slope (change over time).

Participants were members of the Oregon Youth Substance Use Project (OYSUP; Andrews, Tildesley, Hops, Duncan, & Severson, 2003) who were in the 4th and 5th grade (elementary school) at the beginning of the study and were followed until they were in the 11th and 12th grades (high school). This study represents an advance over previous similar research by testing hypotheses developmentally and prospectively. It was hypothesized that (1) children's sensation-seeking, affiliation with deviant peers, and social images, increase over time, (2) children with higher initial levels of sensation-seeking, and steeper growth in sensation-seeking, will be more likely to be using marijuana in adolescence, (3) initial levels and growth in childhood sensation-seeking will predict both initial levels and growth of later deviant peer affiliation and favorability of social images of marijuana users, and (4) these intervening variables were hypothesized to mediate the effect of sensation-seeking on marijuana use. Because boys typically have higher levels of sensation-seeking than girls (Zuckerman et al., 1978), and deviant peer affiliation may have stronger effects on girls than boys (Andrews, 2005, Gifford-Smith et al., 2005), gender differences in this model were examined.

Section snippets

Overview of design

The OYSUP is a cohort-sequential longitudinal study of youth substance-use in which five grade cohorts (grades 1–5 at T1) were assessed annually for four assessments (T1–T4), and annually for a further four assessments (T5–T8) with an interval of two years between T4 and T5. At T1, a total of 1075 children consented to participate and 1070 completed the first assessment (T1). Because of the relatively low prevalence of marijuana use among the younger cohorts at T7, the analyses reported here

Descriptive results

At T3, when children were in the 7th and 8th grades, 2.1% of girls and 6.6% of boys reported having ever tried marijuana, whereas by T7, when children were in 11th or 12th grades, these percentages had increased to 49.7% of girls and 50.0% of boys. There was no significant difference between boys and girls in their reported levels of marijuana use in the past 12 months at T3 or T7. The means and standard deviations for all the observed variables in the model, shown separately for boys and

Discussion

The goal of this prospective study was to examine psychosocial processes by which sensation-seeking, a well-established risk factor for substance-use, leads to adolescent marijuana use. Previous studies have established that sensation-seeking, deviant peer affiliation, and positive evaluation of substances are risk factors for marijuana use, and also that affiliating with deviant peers may mediate effects of sensation-seeking (Yanovitzky, 2005, Zuckerman, 1994). The present study advanced the

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse DA10767. We thank Martha Hardwick and the assessment staff for data collection, and Christine Lorenz for manuscript preparation.

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