It is well-known that personality traits predict drinking motives, and drinking motives predict drinking patterns. However, the connection between personality traits and drinking patterns for students who drink both for coping and enhancement reasons remains unknown. Abby L. Goldstein and Gordon L. Flett of York University in Toronto, Canada attempted to discover this unknown. They conducted a study relating drinking motives with personality traits and drinking patterns of college students over a year time span, a smaller project of a study examining the relationship between childhood variables, personality, alcohol use, and adjustment to university. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, “College students represent a population at risk for binge drinking and alcohol-related consequences, including academic and legal difficulties, physical and psychological concerns, increased injury risk, and involvement in unsafe sexual practices.”
Goldstein and Flett separated 138 first year college students who reported drinking alcohol within the past year into four categories: coping, enhancement, enhancement + coping, and non-internally motivated drinkers. They hypothesized that coping motivated drinkers will have more alcohol related problems, enhancement and non-internally motivated drinkers will drink larger quantities of alcohol, and enhancement plus coping motivated drinkers will have the most extreme binge drinking problems. The study was conducted using data such as neuroticism, drinking quantity, and sensation seeking values. Each participant completed two questionnaires; one given during the first six weeks of the fall semester and the other given three months later. These questionnaires tested neuroticism, drinking quantity, sensation seeking values, and other drinking related measures.
The first questionnaire measured neuroticism and sensation seeking. Neuroticism was tested with the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), consisting of five 2-item scales analyzing the “Big Five” personality factors: extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. Sensation seeking was measured by the 4-item Brief Sensation Seeking Scale (BSSS-4). This is a condensed version of the Form V of the Sensation Seeking Scale. Response choices ranged from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5).
The second questionnaire measured drinking motives, anxiety sensitivity, positive and negative affect, alcohol problems, and alcohol use. Drinking motives were assessed by the DMQ-R made of four subscales: enhancement, coping, social, and conformity. Participants shared the frequency in which they consume alcohol for these reasons. The scale ranged from 1 to 5, 1 being almost never/never and 5 being almost always/always. Anxiety sensitivity was measured with the Anxiety Sensitivity Index-Revised in 1998. The ASI-R analyzes six domains of anxiety sensitivity that form a single higher-order factor. The Positive Affect Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) measured the positive and negative affect. Respondents rated their emotions according to 20 adjective descriptors, half positive and the other negative. They also indicated the extent to which they feel these emotions using a 5-point scale, 1 being very slightly or not at all and 5 being extremely. Alcohol problems were assessed by the Rutgers Alcohol Problem Index. RAPI is a 23-item questionnaire that analyzes the frequency that students experienced alcohol problems within the past year. For this study, participants were given 0 points if they did not experience the item in the past year, and 1 point if they had. Their total score was calculated to represent the frequency of their alcohol problems in the past year. Lastly, alcohol use was assessed with two parts of the Canadian Campus Survey: the amount of alcohol consumed per drinking session and episodic binge drinking. Binge drinking was determined by asking the students how many times in the past two weeks they had consumed five or more drinks.
The means and standard deviations, separate for men and women, were calculated from the data results of the questionnaire. Analysis concluded three observations: (1)Coping and enhancement motives were positively correlated with each other and alcohol use, (2)Coping motives were negatively correlated with positive affect and positively correlated with negative affect, neuroticism, and anxiety sensitivity, and (3)Enhancement motive were significantly and positively correlated with anxiety sensitivity. Based on these observations and the means and standard deviations, the students were placed into four groups. 19 participants were coping motivated, 23 were enhancement motivated, 11 were coping and enhancement motivated, and 85 were non-internally (neither coping of enhancement) motivated. In conclusion, roughly 38% of college students were internally motivated drinkers and 62% were non-internally motivated drinkers.
With these figures, Goldstein and Flett’s hypothesis disproven. They hypothesized that coping motivated drinkers will have more alcohol related problems, enhancement and non-internally motivated drinkers will drink larger quantities of alcohol, and enhancement plus coping motivated drinkers will have the most extreme binge drinking problems. Their research shows that coping motivated drinkers do have more alcohol related problems, so that portion of their hypothesis is correct. However, the research also showed that enhancement and non-internally motivated drinkers consume the least amount of alcohol of the four groups. Also according to the research, coping motivated drinkers have the most extreme binge drinking problems. From Goldstein and Flett’s research, one can see that coping motivated drinkers have the most alcohol related consequences.
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