Drinking to Compensate: Expanding Upon the Motivational Model of Alcohol Use

The motivational model of alcohol use identifies four key drinking motives – coping, conformity, social, and enhancement – as important proximal antecedents of problematic drinking. However, applications of this model have been inconsistent in explaining drinking outcomes. Specifically, it is unclear under which conditions each drinking motive can be a risky or benign indicator of drinking behaviors. The current study theorized that a problematic drinking to compensate behavior could emerge across all drinking motives when alcohol is used to counteract a psychosocial (i.e., nondrinking) deficit. It was hypothesized, at the cross-sectional and daily level, that the associations between each drinking motive and drinking outcomes would be strongest when there was the largest psychosocial deficit present for each motive. Participants were 471 college student drinkers (mean age = 20.19 years; 75.6% female; 39.7% White, 36.5% Black, 15.5% multiracial) who completed a cross-sectional survey assessing drinking behaviors, drinking motives, and psychosocial factors. Some participants (N = 150) also completed up-to 10 daily surveys assessing these same constructs. Results supported the hypothesized model for coping and conformity motives, with associations between these motives and drinking outcomes strengthened when psychosocial deficits were present. There was a marginally significant interaction between coping motives and adaptive coping when predicting drinking quantity in the cross-sectional model (β = -0.06, p = .078). For the interaction between conformity motives and thwarted belongingness, there was a marginally significant effect when predicting consequencesin the cross-sectional model (β = 0.09, p = .073) and a statistically significant effect when predicting drinking quantity in the daily model (β = 0.13, p = .005). However, no interactive effects were present in models including social or enhancement motives. Patterns were generally similar between cross-sectional and daily models, though some differences ...