http://cjonline.com/news/local/2010-04-21/researchers_look_at_binge_drinking

The Capital-Journal April 21, 2010 - 7:55am

MANHATTAN — With binge drinking among college students a concern for many, two Kansas State University researchers may have found a way to combat it through messages tailored to a student's psyche.

Megan Miller, graduate student in psychology, of Pueblo, Colo., and Laura Brannon, associate professor of psychology, researched binge drinking and college students' intent to binge drink. The two examined persuasive messages relating to the topic.

The study used undergraduate students from introductory psychology courses and monitored student responses through a website simulation about fun things to do in Manhattan.

The simulation, Miller said, looked exactly like a real website, with the final page about local bars. On the left-hand side of the page, there was one of three anti-binge drinking messages:

— One-third of the students received a control message, informing them a variety of problems can occur from binge drinking.

— One-third received a social norms message, informing them most college students drink less than one might expect.

— A final one-third received a self-schema message tailored to the student's personal values.

Self-schema is a way of thinking about oneself in terms of your personal beliefs and attitudes.

Prior to the simulation, each student completed a self-schema survey and listed how many drinks they have on a typical occasion. The self-schema messages were then tailored to fit self-schemas that were adventuresome, very warm and caring, responsible, or curious and versatile.

"For example, if I were an adventuresome type of person, I would get the type of message saying, 'You shouldn't engage in binge drinking because alcohol inhibits your ability to be outgoing, and will actually slow you down and prevent you from being the person you are because it's a depressant,' " Miller said.

After seeing a message in the simulation, students then were asked to indicate how many drinks they intended to have on their next social outing. Miller and Brannon then looked at whether the average number of intended drinks differed between the group of students who received a social norms message and the group of students who received a self-schema matched message.

It was found that students who viewed either the tailored self-schema messages or the social norms message intended to drink less than those who viewed a generalized control message, but these two types of messages appealed to different types of people, Miller said.

Social norms and control messages are typically used to detour binge drinking on college campuses, Miller said. However, they haven't been found to be consistently effective.

"Social norms messages are based on the finding that students tend to overestimate how much their peers drink, and that students' perceptions of how much their peers drink influences their own drinking behavior more strongly than how much their peers actually drink. That means that if I think that my peers drink 10 drinks a night when they go out, then I tend to drink more regardless of whether that is the average," Miller said.

On average, Miller said most studies have found that students have four to five drinks in a social setting.

"So, it was previously suspected that if these misperceptions were corrected, then students would reduce the amount of drinking. Our findings suggest that this may work for a subset of people," Miller said.

The goal, Miller said, was to compare the self-schema tailored messages to the social norms messages.

Based on prior research, self-schema tailored messages have been found to be more effective at changing behavior than generalized messages. The results of Miller and Brannon's study support this previous research and also suggest that for a subset of people, social norms messages work. With the data, she believes this personalized type of anti-binge drinking messages can be posted via Facebook, webmail, K-State Online and other frequented student sites. Personalization can be done through tracking cookies, as already practiced by Facebook.

Currently Brannon is looking at attitude toward these messages, as attitude can be indicative of a person's future behavior change.

Brannon and Miller hope to submit their findings on self-schema messages for publication later this year

Specialty wines from all over the world fill the shelves at City Wine Market. About 90 percent of the stores inventory is priced under $25. by Richard Gwin

Time magazine came out this week with a fascinating article looking at the life expectancy of those who drink moderately, versus those who drink heavily and not at all.

The perhaps surprising result? Those who totally abstain from drinking die at a younger age than either those who drink heavily or those who drink moderately.

The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking. But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that — for reasons that aren't entirely clear — abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one's risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers.

The study tried to account for all possible influencing factors: socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support, the article said.

The article theorizes possible causes for this surprising finding, including that moderate drinking is a part of so many social situations, and that social interaction is crucial to maintaining good brain function and other a positive outlook on life, which leads to greater longevity.

What do you think? Should we be encouraged to drink a glass of wine at lunch, or a martini in the afternoon?