Many times, when people think about the traditional college lifestyle, an image that commonly appears involves a keg or a shot glass. In many ways, this conception of college life is emphasized and exacerbated in popular culture. For example, Asher Roth recently released a chart-topping song titled, “I Love College.” The overwhelming themes of the song include alcohol, drugs, and sex. In the chorus of the song, Roth chants:
“That party last night was awfully crazy I wish we taped it,
I danced my ass off and had this one girl completely naked,
Drink my beer and smoke my weed but my good friends is all I need
Pass out at 3, wake up at 10, go out to eat then do it again
Man, I love college”
It is evident, from this song and from societal conceptions at large, that it is no secret that alcohol consumption, particularly binge drinking, is a common weekend (and sometimes even weekday) activity among college students. Recent statistics reveal that four out of five college students drink, with 18% of students having suffered from clinically-significant alcohol-related problems. Accordingly, 70% of students have admitted to engaging in sexual activity while under the influence of alcohol – activity that they reveal probably would not have occurred if they had been sober.
Legal problems associated with college alcohol consumption are also prevalent on college campuses. So much so that last summer, presidents from about 100 of the most well-known institutions, including Duke, Dartmouth, Syracuse, Tufts, and Ohio State, encouraged lawmakers to reduce the drinking age from 21 to 18, believing that it might decrease the pervasiveness of risky drinking behaviors on campus.
From these staggering statistics and legal strides, an essential question emerges: What exactly is the cause of and motivation for drinking in college, especially considering that most students are under the age of 21? Brian Borsari and Kate B. Carey attempted to answer this question in their literature review, “Peer Influences on College Drinking: A review of the research.” Their review reveals that interpersonal processes play a significant role in drinking among college students. Accordingly, they concluded that high-risk alcohol use is exacerbated due to the presence of direct peer influences, modeling, and perceived norms.
Peer influences include both direct and indirect dimensions. Peers might perform actions that explicitly focus on getting someone to drink, through overt verbal commands or actions, like buying a round of drinks, for example. Additionally, peers may offer implicit cues that reveal what types of behaviors are contextually appropriate and would lead to social acceptance. New students, due to their desire to make friends and adapt to college life, are especially susceptible to direct influences. The research revealed that social security and a certain level of maturity are positively correlated with possessing the confidence to refuse an offered drink. Additionally, research on modeling “indicates that participants exposed to heavy-drinking models consume more than students exposed to light-drinking models or no models at all.”
The literature also revealed that perceived drinking norms significantly influence the amount of alcohol consumed. Accordingly, the more a student perceives heavy drinking or support of heavy drinking among their peers, the higher their personal consumption will be. Interestingly, however, related research revealed that “students commonly overestimate the quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption of those around them” and indicate that close friends and other college students drink more than themselves. The discrepancies evident between perceived norms and actual norms can be explained with the theories of pluralistic ignorance and attribution theory. First, individuals misperceive their peers’ attitudes towards drinking and believe that their own behavior does not correlate with the norm. In addition, because most students possess an incomplete knowledge of their peers’ true beliefs and behaviors, observing them drinking heavily causes assumptions to be made and norms to be inflated.
It is evident that peer influence and perceived social norms play a significant role in personal alcohol consumption among college students. The research provides insight on the psychology of drinking and helps begin to explain the prevalence of drinking in college.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43pkqeamXe8
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-08-18-college-drinking_N.htm
http://hcs.calpoly.edu/peerhealth/alcohol/info_students_stats.html
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