Exploring the Issue of Drinking on College Campuses: What We Can Learn from Social Psychology

Alan Reifman, Ph.D., ProfessorTexas Tech University

Presentation at York College of PennsylvaniaSeptember 13, 2012

Social Psychology

“…how the thought, feeling and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others” (G.W. Allport, 1969)

Aspects of Social Psychology to be Discussed

•Social Influence/Conformity•Self-Selection•Social Networks•Social Identity•Social Norms•Social Status

Asch Conformity Experiment (Two-minute YouTube video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRh5qy09nNw

Social Influence/Conformity

Group members get individual to act a certain way (such as drinkheavily) either through peer pressure or modeling of the behavior.

Have a drink!Have a drink! Join us!Join us!

SelectionIndividual resembles friends on key behavior (drinking level), not because of friends’ influence, but instead by selecting whom to befriend.

You look like a nice group. Where’s the party?

You look like a nice group. Where’s the party?

• Longitudinal survey tracking new college students over first 3 semesters

• Students reported on their own drinking and that of their social-network members (i.e., self-report measurement)

Time 1 Time 2 Time 3Fall of Fresh. Spring of Fresh. Fall of Soph.

INFLU

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SELE

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Focus on each relationship between variables at the beginning and end of an arrow. We’re testing whether students with high scores on the first variable also tend to have high scores on the second variable. Asterisk (*) indicates relationship reliably different from zero (although some relationships are stronger than others).

Social Identity: When identification with a group drives behavior

Group Identity Behavior

Steelers/Eagles/Ravens Go to games, wear team clothingFootball Fan

Democrat/Republican Vote for candidate, sticker on car,contribute money, volunteer

We (Reifman et al., 2006) found that, holding constant how much students’peers actually drank, students who thought of themselves as belonging to a group of “drinking buddies” drank more than students who did not think of themselves that way.

EXAMPLE: Smith’s friends and Jones’s friends may drink the same amounts of alcohol. But if Smith thinks of his/her friends as consisting of “drinking buddies” and Jones does not, Smith will likely drink more than Jones (purely a matter of how one labels one’s peers).

Social Norms Programming

1. Students tend to overestimate how much drinking occurs on campus (remember that we’re dealing with the “actual, imagined, or implied” social world)

2. Students seem to want to conform to what they perceive as the “normal” level of drinking (i.e., “keeping up with the Joneses”).

3. Social norms approach seeks to counteract step no. 1, by providing accurate information on students’ drinking (that it’s not as rampant as people think)

National Social Norms Institute at the University of Virginia (http://socialnorms.org)

From Georgetown University (National Social Norms Institute)

• 18 institutions in all regions of the U.S. • Matched randomization design (i.e., match pairs of universities on similarity of characteristics, randomly assign one school in each pair to social-norms program group and the other to control group)

• Social-norms programming lasted for 3 years at program schools• Multiple sources: Posters, newspaper ads, e-mail, presentations• All materials pilot-tested and approved by researchers• Training, implementation checklists, progress reports for quality control

Representative Finding from Social Norms Project(Drinks consumed per week)

Program groupreported lessdrinking than the control group at the end, suggesting the program was beneficial.

It was not because the program lowered drinking, however. Rather,the control group showed increaseddrinking and the program group stayed flat.

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2000 2003

Program Group Control Group

DeJong, W., et al. (2009). A multisite randomized trial of social norms marketing campaigns to reduce college student drinking: A replication failure. Substance Abuse, 30,127–140.

• 14 institutions• 3-year follow-up• “…having a SNM campaign was not significantly associated with lower perceptions of student drinking levels or lower self-reported alcohol consumption” (p. 127)

DeJong, W. (2010). Social norms marketing campaigns to reduce campus alcohol problems. Health Communication, 25, 615-616

Trying to draw conclusions from the two studies:

“We found that the SNM campaigns worked in campus communities with low outlet density, but failed in those with high outlet density” (p. 615).

Social norms marketing at York (Student Handbook)http://www.ycp.edu/media/yorkwebsite/studentaffairs/StudentHandbook12.pdf

Jennifer Engler & Joshua Landau, Psychology, York College

Engler, J. N., & Landau, J. D. (2011). Source is important when developing a social norms campaign to combat academic dishonesty. Teaching of Psychology, 38, 46-48.

Engler, J. N., Landau, J. D., & Epstein, M. (2008). Keeping up with the Joneses: Students’ perceptions of academically dishonest behavior. Teaching of Psychology, 35, 99-102.

Study by Carolyn Hsu presented at 2012American Sociological Association meeting(reported by ABC News and other media)

Prevention Resources

http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov

Thank You

Questions?