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

1. Exploring the Issue of Drinking on College Campuses: What We Can Learn from Social Psychology Alan Reifman, Ph.D., Professor Texas Tech University Presentation at York College of Pennsylvania September 13, 2012

2. 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)

3. Aspects of Social Psychology to be Discussed • Social Influence/Conformity • Self-Selection • Social Networks • Social Identity • Social Norms • Social Status

4. Asch Conformity Experiment (Two-minute YouTube video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRh5qy09nNw

5. Social Influence/Conformity Group members get individual to act a certain way (such as drink heavily) either through peer pressure or modeling of the behavior. Join us! Have a drink!

6. Selection Individual 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?

7. 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)

8. SELECTION INFLUENCE INFLUENCE Time 1 Time 2 Time 3 Fall of Fresh. Spring of Fresh. Fall of Soph. 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).

9. Social Identity: When identification with a group drives behavior Group IdentityBehavior Steelers/Eagles/Ravens Go to games, wear team clothing Football 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).

10. 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)

11. From Georgetown University (National Social Norms Institute)

12. 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

13. 6 5.5 5 4.5 4 Program Group Control Group 3.5 3 2000 2003 Representative Finding from Social Norms Project (Drinks consumed per week) Program group reported less drinking 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 increased drinking and the program group stayed flat.

14. 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).

15. 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.

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

17. Prevention Resources http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov

18. Thank You Questions?