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Addictive Behaviors

(PS1-20) Drinking to Compensate: Expanding upon the Motivational Model of Alcohol Use

Friday, November 15, 2024
8:30 AM – 9:30 AM EST
Location: Franklin Hall, Level 4, Marriott Downtown
Abstract Text: Emerging adults experience greater risk for hazardous drinking and subsequent consequences than any other age group. The motivational model of alcohol use identifies drinking motives as important, proximal antecedents of problematic drinking. Though the motivational model has strong theoretical and empirical support, its applications have been inconsistent in explaining drinking outcomes. Guided by theory underlying the motivational model and subsequent empirical studies that supported this model, the present study theorized that a problematic drinking to compensate behavior could emerge across all drinking motives when an individual used alcohol to counteract a psychosocial (i.e., nondrinking) deficit. It was hypothesized that, at both cross-sectional and daily levels, the association between each drinking motive (i.e., coping, conformity, social, and enhancement) and drinking outcomes would be strongest when there was the largest respective psychosocial deficit present for each motive (i.e., low adaptive coping, high thwarted belongingness, low positive social contact, and high anhedonia, respectively). Participants were 471 college student drinkers (mean age = 20.19 years; 75.6% assigned female at birth; 39.7% White, 36.5% Black, 15.5% multiracial) who were recruited online and completed a cross-sectional survey assessing drinking behaviors, drinking motives, and psychosocial factors. A subsample of these participants (N = 150) also completed up-to 10 daily surveys assessing these same constructs. Results from coping motive models and conformity motive models presented support for the hypothesized model in which the associations between motives and drinking outcomes were strengthened when there was a psychosocial deficit present. There was a marginally significant interaction between coping motives and adaptive coping when predicting drinking quantity in the cross-sectional model (β = -0.06, p = .078). For the interaction between conformity motives and thwarted belongingness, there was a marginally significant effect when predicting consequences in the cross-sectional model (β = 0.09, p = .073) and a statistically significant effect when predicting drinking quantity in the daily model (β = 0.13, p = .005). However, no interactive effects were present in models including social or enhancement motives. Generally, patterns of findings were similar between cross-sectional and daily models; however, differences did emerge in which some drinking outcomes were impacted by the hypothesized interactions in only one of the between- or within-person models. The current findings suggest that an interplay between drinking motives and nondrinking, psychosocial factors may exist in predicting drinking behaviors. However, because support for the hypothesized model was mixed and varied by drinking motive, additional research on this expansion of the motivational model is needed. As such, future researchers may wish to explore the potential for multidimensionality within each psychosocial construct, complex temporal associations within individuals, and differences based on drinking severity levels.