The College, Alcohol and Peers Study (CAPS)

The present study will evaluate college students (N=100) from 2- and 4-year colleges/universities between 21-24 years old to assess anxiety, affect, broad social motives (BSM) and peer group influences on drinking and other risk-taking behaviors. This study will employ two sound scientific methods for testing behavior during drinking events (i.e., lab alcohol administration and daily diary) and use novel strategies to compare results of these two methods in the same sample. Using an ad-lib drinking paradigm, students' risk-taking, as measured by the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), will be assessed when alone and during one of two randomly assigned peer group conditions (close friends or new peers). Participants will be allowed to freely drink (within safety limits) with their peer group prior to completing the BART again. These same students will complete daily electronic diaries on four weekends (Thursday - Sunday; total 24 assessments) regarding BSM, motives to drink, peers in their social group, alcohol use and consequences, and if/how their social group changed (e.g., few close friends to large party with many new peers) during the drinking event. Competing hypotheses will be tested such that: 1) anxiety is expected to be a stronger predictor of drinking behavior and greater differences in risk-taking in the new peer condition than close friend condition or 2) BSM is expected to be a stronger predictor of drinking behavior and greater differences in risk-taking in the close friend condition than new peers condition. Results are expected to be replicated in the daily diary reports. Further, this multimethod approach will allow us to evaluate how behavior assessed in the lab predicts naturally occurring behaviors in an uncontrolled setting. For example, the investigators will assess whether greater increases in self-reported risk-taking from baseline to after entering peer groups in the bar lab setting will predict heavier drinking on nights when most drinking