Consideration of future consequences as a moderator of the willingness-behavior relationship for young adult marijuana use and consequences

Abstract

The Prototype Willingness Model is a dual-processing (i.e., intentional and socially reactive) health-risk behavior model. The socially reactive path includes behavioral willingness, descriptive normative perceptions, and favorable images of individuals who engage in health-risk behavior (prototype favorability) as important predictors of health behaviors. Individual differences (such as consideration of future consequences) may potentiate the effects of behavioral willingness on health-risk outcomes, such as marijuana use. Given limited research investigating marijuana use and the Prototype Willingness Model, the goals of the current study were: 1) examine consideration of future consequences and Prototype Willingness Model social reaction pathway variables in relation to behavioral willingness to use marijuana longitudinally; and 2) determine if consideration of future consequences moderated the behavioral willingness-marijuana use relation prospectively. Young adults (N = 769) from a larger longitudinal study completed baseline and 3 follow-up assessments (Months 3, 4, 5). Behavioral willingness was positively related to a higher likelihood of use, more days having used marijuana, and more consequences prospectively, over and above baseline use. Consideration of future consequences moderated the association between behavioral willingness and hours high in a typical week. These findings support the willingness-behavior association of the Prototype Willingness Model and preliminarily demonstrate consideration of future consequences' differential impact on behavioral willingness-future marijuana use relation. Intervention and prevention implications are discussed.

Does Feedback Seeking Help Safety Performance Improvement? The Role of Consideration of Future Consequence

“…Consideration of future consequence refers to the extent to which the individual considers the potential future outcomes of the current behavior and the extent to which the individual is affected by those potential future outcomes (Cao and Xia, 2020). Consideration of future consequence can effectively predict a lot of individual behaviors (Lewis et al, 2018), such as following rules and regulations, self-control, reducing alcohol abuse, etc. Safety performance can largely be considered as a future variable due to the lag between safety behavior and safety consequence.…”

Legalization of recreational cannabis: Facilitators and barriers to switching from an illegal to a legal source

“…Purposive sampling was employed to ensure the student researchers and participants were embedded in the same culture. Social network recruitment strategies facilitate open and frank responses ( Lewis et al, 2018 ) and have been effectively employed in previous research on health and sensitive research areas ( Akhtar et al, 2020 , Brown et al, 2013 ). Participation took approximately 10 min.…”

Control of Recreational Cannabis in a New Zealand University Sample: Perceptions of Informal and Formal Controls

“…Cannabis prototypes were measured using three open-ended questions that asked students to write a list of words to describe how their peers would perceive a student of the same gender as themselves based on the hypothetical student’s cannabis use (never uses, sometimes uses, is a heavy user) (adapted from Lewis et al; 22 Robertson & Tustin 21 ).…”

“…Prototype research has informed research on alcohol 21 and is an emerging area of research in the context of cannabis. For example, Lewis et al 22 found that individuals’ favorable perceptions of a typical cannabis user were associated with increased willingness to use cannabis themselves.…”