Do misperceptions of peer drinking influence personal drinking behavior? Results from a complete social network of first-year college students.

Abstract

This study considered the influence of misperceptions of typical versus self-identified important peers’ heavy drinking on personal heavy drinking intentions and frequency utilizing data from a complete social network of college students. The study sample included data from 1,313 students (44% male, 57% White, 15% Hispanic/Latinx) collected during the fall and spring semesters of their freshman year. Students provided perceived heavy drinking frequency for a typical student peer and up to 10 identified important peers. Personal past-month heavy drinking frequency was assessed for all participants at both time points. By comparing actual with perceived heavy drinking frequencies, measures of misperceptions of heavy drinking (accurately estimate, overestimate, underestimate) were constructed for both general and important peers. These misperceptions were then used as predictors of concurrent and prospective personal heavy drinking frequency and intentions using network autocorrelation analyses. The majority of students (84.8%) overestimated, 11.3% accurately estimated, and 3.9% underestimated heavy drinking among their general peers, whereas 42.0% accurately estimated, 36.9% overestimated, and 21.1% underestimated important peers’ heavy drinking. For both referents, overestimation of peer heavy drinking was associated with more frequent heavy drinking and higher drinking intentions at both time points. Importantly, the effects of underestimating and overestimating close peers’ drinking on personal alcohol use were significant after controlling for the influence of misperceptions of general peers’ heavy drinking. Close peers are a critical referent group in assessments related to social norms for young adult alcohol use. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.

Changes in College Student Alcohol Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Are Perceived Drinking Norms Still Relevant?

“…Social norms theory (Berkowitz, 2004) acknowledges that perceptions of others' behaviors are often inaccurate, which is particularly problematic given that college students tend to overestimate their peers' alcohol use (Cox et al, 2019;Perkins et al, 2015). Accordingly, norms-based interventions such as personalized normative feedback (PNF) have been designed to correct over-inflated normative perceptions, which can subsequently reduce students' alcohol use (Dotson et al, 2015;Neighbors et al, 2018;Patrick et al, 2014).…”

Adolescents’ Frequency of Alcohol Use and Problems from Alcohol Abuse: Integrating Dating Partners with Parent and Peer Influences

“…Thus, it is possible that reports of dating partners' drinking are subject to distortion. However, it is important to note that perceptions that others are heavy drinkers is associated with adolescents' heavy use (Cox et al, 2019). Additionally, the initial analyses indicated that daters compared with non-daters reported higher frequency of drinking.…”

“…For example, adolescents' initial substance use is associated with an increase in the number of friends who are substance users over time reflecting a selection effect; and the initial number of friends who use substances is associated with increases in substance use reflecting a modeling effect (Simons-Morton & Chen, 2006). Importantly, although young people have tended to overestimate heavy drinking among their peers, nevertheless, such perceptions are associated with more frequent heavy drinking (Cox et al, 2019).…”

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“…Young adults tend to overestimate the amount and frequency of drinking among their peers which is then related to their own decisions about how often and how much to drink. Those who perceive higher rates of consumption among their peers drink more (Cox et al, 2019;Neighbors, Lee, Lewis, Fossos, & Larimer, 2007). Young adults also overestimate what their peers would deem to be acceptable alcohol consumption.…”