Reactivity to Conspicuousness and Alcohol Use among College Students: The Moderating Effect of Alcohol Expectancies

The analysis of self-report data from 147 college undergraduates suggested that alcohol expectancies moderate the effect of a dispositional susceptibility to embarrassment elicited by undesired conspicuousness [center-of-attention-induced embarrassability (CAE)] on drinking behavior. Individuals unlikely to experience embarrassment when they engage in behaviors that make them stand out in a crowd, a common occurrence when one drinks to excess, drank heavily if they expected alcohol to make them more assertive socially. Students with similar beliefs about the effects of alcohol on social interaction who were high in CAE consumed substantially less alcohol than the latter individuals. Their overall levels of drinking were more comparable to those of the low-expectancy participants, suggesting that the disdain for conspicuousness characteristic of people with a susceptibility to CAE may counteract the desire for social disinhibition that often motivates alcohol consumption.