Social anxiety and heavy situational drinking: Coping and conformity motives as multiple mediators

Social anxiety clinical disorder with a cluster of symptoms ranging from fear of being negatively evaluated, avoidance of situations where one might be judged or evaluated, fear or avoidance of social interactions that may result in negative evaluation. Research has shown that people with clinically elevated social anxiety are more likely to develop a clinical alcohol use disorder than people without such high social anxiety. Understanding more about differences in drinking patterns and motivation to drink alcohol among high social anxiety drinkers remains an important area of research.

Our earlier research (Terlecki, Ecker, Buckner, 2014) showed that people with high social anxiety might experience more drinking problems due to heavier drinking in particular high-risk situations: negative emotional situations (e.g., when feeling sad or angry) and personal/intimate situations (e.g., before sexual intercourse). Understanding why socially anxious persons drink heavily in certain situations could inform alcohol treatment and prevention efforts for these high-risk drinkers. Drinking motives are an individual’s reason for drinking alcohol and they may help explain why socially anxious drinkers drink more in certain situations. People generally drink alcohol to enhance positive feelings, to socialize, to cope with negative feelings, or to avoid social ridicule. People have different reasons for drinking in different situations and research suggests that highly socially anxious drinkers are motivated to drink for different reasons than people in general. Understanding more about socially anxious persons’ motivation for drinking in high-risk situations may help us learn to prevent risky drinking practices that can cause more alcohol problems and alcohol misuse.

In the current study, we examined the mediating role of drinking motives on the relationship between social anxiety and drinking in these high-risk situations among university students (N = 232). We found that clinically elevated social anxiety was associated with greater coping motives (i.e., wanting to drink to cope with negative mood) and conformity motives (i.e., wanting to drink to avoid social scrutiny or evaluation) more so than enhancement motives (i.e., wanting to drink to enhance positive mood) or social motives (i.e., wanting to drink to socialize). Both coping and conformity motives mediated the relation between social anxiety and heavier alcohol consumption in negative emotional and personal/intimate drinking situations. This means that socially anxious individuals with greater coping and conformity motives were most likely to drink heavily in high-risk situations. Our findings also showed that coping and conformity motives were jointly linked with heavier situational drinking among socially anxious drinkers. Our findings suggest that heavy situational drinking among undergraduates with clinically elevated social anxiety can be jointly attributed to desire to manage negative affect and to avoid social scrutiny.



The full paper can be accessed here until November 2014.

Terlecki, M. A., Ecker, A. H., & Buckner, J. D. (2014). College drinking problems and social anxiety: The importance of drinking context. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 28(2), 545-552. doi:10.1037/a0035770

Our 2014 paper can be accessed here


Meredith Terlecki