Psychological Antecedents of Binge Drinking Among College Students

Abstract

Binge drinking is often studied among college students because they have the highest alcohol consumption rate relative to any other group in the nation. The present study examines nine predictor variables to determine which psychological antecedents influence why some students are more likely to participate in binge drinking practices than others. For cross-validation purposes, after administering an online questionnaire to 1,786 college students, the sample was split into two groups. A multi-staged path analysis model was tested to explore factors that influence binge drinking, including: depression, worry, social isolation, social interaction anxiety, and five different time perspective dimensions. Only 7% of the variance in binge drinking could be accounted for on the basis of the predictor set. The amount of variance captured suggests that the set of predictors effective at explaining binge drinking among middle-aged adults is not consistent with what was found among college students in this study. Fully 33% of the variability in depression scores was captured on the basis of the antecedent predictors, and 29% of the variability in worry scores was explained. One novel aspect of this investigation is that time perspective had not previously been examined in relation to social isolation. Notably, this study revealed that four of the five time perspective dimensions were significant predictors of both social isolation and social interaction anxiety. The findings from this study suggest that it would be beneficial to explore other predictor variables in order to better explain binge drinking among college students.