A Diary Study of Daily Perceived Mistreatment and Alcohol Consumption in College Students

Abstract

A 30-day college student diary study examined daily perceptions of mistreatment, state ego-depletion, and evening alcohol consumption. We found that on days college students reported being ego-depleted, the more negative mistreatment experiences they reported during the day the more they drank that evening. In addition, negative mistreatment experiences were positively related to binge drinking on days students were high in ego-depletion but were negatively related to binge drinking on days students were low in ego-depletion. Perceiving mistreatment leads to increased drinking only on days that people do not have the cognitive resources to cope with being discriminated against more adaptively.

Notes

¹The measure of perceived mistreatment asked participants to report how negative the mistreatment experience was if they reported that it happened. Therefore, participants rated the event only if it occurred. By using these ratings of the mistreatment events, the analyses do not include anyone who did not report any perceived mistreatment over the 30 days.

²We selected only three items from this scale because daily diary assessments need to be kept short to ensure a good daily compliance. These three items were selected because of good face validity to the construct being measured.

³This index of perceived mistreatment reflects both the quantity and severity (i.e., perceived negativity) of discriminatory events experienced/perceived that day.

Note. N = 153. Gender was coded such that 0 = male, 1 = female; thus, positive correlations denote higher values for women relative to men.

**p < .01.

Note. Unstandardized regression coefficients are presented for the drinking DV and logits for binge drinking DV.

*p < .05. **p < .01.

⁴Gender did not moderate any of the results.