The role of drinking motives in social anxiety and alcohol use

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Abstract

Although social anxiety and problem drinking commonly co-occur, the relationship between social anxiety and drinking among college students is not well understood. The current study examined the relationship between drinking motives, or reasons for drinking, and social anxiety in 239 volunteers. Contrary to hypotheses, high (n = 83), moderate (n = 90), and low (n = 66) social anxiety groups did not differ in endorsement of coping and conformity drinking motives. Further, social anxiety was negatively related to weekly alcohol use and unrelated to alcohol-related problems. Post hoc hierarchical multiple regression analyses conducted for each social anxiety group indicated that coping motives were related to greater alcohol use and problems for those in the high and moderate social anxiety groups, but not for the low social anxiety group. It appears that drinking motives, particularly coping motives, have promise in providing a greater understanding of the social anxiety–drinking relationship. Drinking motives could aid in identification of socially anxious students at risk for alcohol problems and inform intervention strategies.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 239 undergraduate student volunteers from the Psychology Subject Pool (59 percent women; mean age = 19.7, SD = 1.5) who reported alcohol use during their lifetime (see Table 1). The majority of the participants were single (99 percent) and Caucasian (90 percent). Nearly half of the students were in the first year of college (46 percent). The majority of the students reported at least one binge-drinking episode (n = 187; 78 percent), and most reported two or more binge-drinking

Results

Demographic and study variable summaries for the whole sample and by social anxiety group are presented in Table 1. The sample had a mean SPAI score of 49.88 that is comparable to means found in college student samples (e.g., Turner et al., 1989). Post hoc analyses indicated that the high social anxiety group reported drinking less per occasion than the low social anxiety group. The three social anxiety groups varied in SPAI scores as expected. Chi-square analyses indicated a trend for a

Discussion

The purpose of the current study was to understand the relationship between social anxiety and drinking in college students by conducting an initial investigation regarding the role of drinking motives. Results indicate that social anxiety was unrelated to alcohol-related problems and had a small negative association with typical weekly alcohol use. Further, social anxiety was unrelated to drinking motives. Although the findings did not support hypotheses that social anxiety would be positively

Acknowledgements

This paper was supported in part by a National Research Service Award Predoctoral Fellowship (1 F31 AA13462-01A1) from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism awarded to the first author. The authors express gratitude to the undergraduate research assistants who assisted with the project.

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