Transcript Slide 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
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)
Aspects of Social Psychology to be Discussed
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Social Influence/Conformity
Self-Selection
Social Networks
Social Identity
Social Norms
Social Status
Asch Conformity Experiment
(Two-minute YouTube video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRh5qy09nNw
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.
Have a drink!
Join us!
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?
• 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)
Time 1
Fall of Fresh.
Time 2
Spring of Fresh.
Time 3
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).
Social Identity: When identification with a group drives behavior
Group Identity
Behavior
Steelers/Eagles/Ravens
Football Fan
Go to games, wear team clothing
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).
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)
From Georgetown University
(National Social Norms Institute)
• 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
Representative Finding from
Social Norms Project
(Drinks consumed per week)
6
5.5
5
4.5
4
Program Group
Control Group
3.5
3
2000
2003
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.
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).
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.
Study by Carolyn Hsu presented at 2012
American Sociological Association meeting
(reported by ABC News and other media)
Prevention Resources
http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov
Thank You
Questions?