alcohol consumption and next-day social/academic stress

Considerable research examining the stress-alcohol link has examined social-learning based individual difference factors (e.g., expectancies, motives) as potential moderators and mediators of this association (see Greeley & Oei, 1999; Cooper et al., 2015). Relatively less work has examined the influence of the social environment. For college students, who are more likely to drink with others versus alone (Christiansen et al., 2002), we argue that the social environment in which drinking occurs is a necessary component in understanding alcohol consumption. Given the fundamental role of the need to belong in motivating human behavior (see Baumeister & Leary, 1995), we also posit that social stress is more likely to motivate social alcohol consumption than other forms of stress (i.e., academic stress). Specifically, the current study uses daily diary methodology to examine whether daily social and academic stress are related to college students’ nightly alcohol consumption with others, whether these associations are moderated by peer drinking that night, and whether social alcohol consumption buffers against next-day social stress.