Social influences in motivated drinking among college students

This study tested whether drinking motives mediate the relation between personality and alcohol use and whether these predictors affected drinking in these individuals' friends. College students and their friends participated in the study as dyads (n = 43 dyads, 86 participants). Each person completed surveys and a 28-day experience sampling protocol. Structural equation analyses found that (a) social motives mediated the relation between extraversion and alcohol outcomes, (b) coping motives mediated the relation between neuroticism and alcohol outcomes, and (c) enhancement motives mediated the relation between extraversion and alcohol outcomes. Moreover, young adults' alcohol use, but not their problem use, was influenced by their own drinking motives as well as the drinking motives of their best friends.