Two motives for alcohol consumption have been emphasized in the etiological and the reasonsfor-drinking literature: (a) people drink alcohol to cope with stress, and (b) people drink alcohol because of social influences. There is support for both of these hypotheses, but the results are usually modest and most authors agree that more complex theories of alcohol consumption are needed. This study examined the interactional effects of reasons for drinking alcohol and situational factors on alcohol consumption. Standardized telephone interviews were conducted with 781 randomly selected Michigan drinkers. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that gender, friends' alcohol consumption, coping, and social motives for drinking were significant predictors of study participants' alcohol consumption. As predicted, there was a significant interaction between drinking to cope with stress and perceived stress, and there was also a significant interaction between drinking for social reasons and friends' alcohol consumption. Similarities and differences in the results for women, men, Blacks, and Whites are described.
Individuals' expressed reasons for drinking alcoholSince the 1950's, researchers have examined people's self-reported reasons for drinking alcohol (Cahalan, Cisin, & Crossley, 1969;Cooper, Russell, & George, 1988;Farber, Khavari, & Douglass, 1980;Johnson, Schwitters, Wilson, Nagoshi, & McClearn, 1985;Novacek, Raskin, & Hogan, 1991;Straus & Bacon, 1953). People do not have complete understanding of the nexus of physiological, psychological, social, and environmental factors that influence their behavior (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Nonetheless, self-reports of motives for drinking alcohol provide insight into people's psychological state and have empirically been related to consumption levels (Cahalan et al., 1969;Cooper et al., 1988;Farber et al., 1980). Most authors have focused on general samples of the adult population or college students, rather than alcoholics or identified problem drinkers. The majority of these studies have focused on the factor structure of individuals' motives for drinking, as well as determining if some types of motives are more strongly related than others to heavy alcohol consumption.Requests for reprints should be sent to: Antonia Abbey, PhD, Department of Community Medicine, Wayne State University, 4201 St. Antoine, Detroit, MI 48201. Cahalan et al. (1969) found that social reasons were more commonly given for drinking alcohol, but that heavy drinkers chose more coping reasons than did infrequent drinkers. Many researchers have found that drinking alcohol to cope with problems is more likely to lead to abusive drinking than is social drinking (Cahalan et al., 1969;Cooper et al., 1988;Farber et al., 1980;Johnson et al., 1985). There is also evidence, however, that social motives for consuming alcohol can lead to heavy drinking (Brennan, Walfish, & AuBuchon, 1986;Ratliff & Burkhart, 1984). For example, Brennan et al. (1986), in their review of the longitudinal liter...