Do trait anticipatory processing, self-focused attention, and post-event processing explain the relationship between social anxiety and negative drinking motives in undergraduates?

Abstract

Despite an established relationship between social anxiety (SA) and negative reinforcement drinking motives (NRDMs), relatively little is known about the factors that explain this relationship. This study explored whether three processes implicated in cognitive models of SA (anticipatory processing, self-focused attention, and post-event processing) mediated the relationship between SA and NRDMs in undergraduates. Participants (N = 180) completed self-report measures of social interaction and evaluation anxiety, anticipatory and post-event processing, self-focused attention, drinking motives, and depression. Analyses were conducted using parallel multiple-mediation analyses, which employed bootstrapping tests of significance. Most notably, results showed that the relationships between interaction/evaluation anxiety and drinking to cope with anxiety were explained by trait tendency to experience anticipatory processing and self-focused attention. The relationship between interaction anxiety and drinking to cope with depression was also explained by a tendency to engage in self-focused attention. Conversely, evaluation anxiety directly predicted drinking to cope with depression, while both interaction and evaluation anxiety directly predicted drinking to conform to peers. Overall, these findings further elucidate these relationships by suggesting that anticipatory processing and self-focused attention, but not post-event processing, explain the relationship between SA and drinking to cope with negative affect. Alternatively, these cognitive processes do not appear relevant to SA and conformity-motivated drinking.

Keywords:

• Social anxiety
• anticipatory processing
• self-focused attention
• post-event processing
• drinking motives
• undergraduates

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Notes

1 Given that the PEPI-T was still under development at the time of data collection, a draft version was used in the present study. Subtle wording changes have since been made (i.e. the words “often” or “very” were omitted from items 3, 4, 5, 9, and 12).

2 Analyses were also conducted using Pearson’s product correlation coefficients, with largely consistent findings emerging (see Table 1).