Social anxiety as a moderator of the relationship between perceived norms and drinking.
OBJECTIVE
College students overestimate the drinking of their peers, and the more they overestimate, the more they drink. The present research was designed to evaluate social anxiety as a moderator of the relationship between perceived norms and drinking among college men and women.


METHODS
Participants included 1,217 first-year residence-hall students (62.8% women) who completed Web-based assessments of social anxiety, perceived norms, and self-reported drinking.


RESULTS
Results replicated previous research in that students overestimated the drinking of their peers (d = 0.75, p < .001). Students who had higher social anxiety drank somewhat more but did not differ from students who had lower social anxiety on perceived norms. However, the relationship between perceived norms and drinking was stronger among students who had higher social anxiety (d = 0.92, p < .001) relative to less socially anxious students (d = 0.02, p = NS). Higher levels of social anxiety were associated with a stronger relationship between perceived norms and drinking for both men (d = 0.86, p < .001) and women (d = 0.50, p < .001) but stronger for men (d = 0.26, p < .001).


CONCLUSIONS
These results corroborate previous literature, which suggests that social factors are important determinants of drinking in this population and suggest that social anxiety is associated with susceptibility to peer influences on drinking. Additional work evaluating whether reductions in social anxiety may ameliorate the impact of perceived norms on drinking would be worthwhile.
Neighbors
Clayton
C
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Box 356560, Seattle, Washington 98195-6560, USA. claytonn@u.washington.edu
Fossos
Nicole
N
Woods
Briana A
BA
Fabiano
Patricia
P
Sledge
Michael
M
Frost
Deborah
D
D000328:Adult; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000453:epidemiology*; D001290:Attitude; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D010379:Peer Group; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015995:Prevalence; D012737:Sex Factors; D012945:Social Values; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires