A Controlled Test of Interpersonal Rejection, Social Anxiety, and Alcohol Use among Female Adolescents

University Of North Texas, Denton TX

Investigators

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Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract Individuals with elevated social anxiety (SA) are at particular risk for problematic drinking, and recent work suggests that this relation may be specific to women; however, alcohol use among adolescent girls is severely understudied, and mechanisms underlying the SA-alcohol use relation remain unclear. This dearth of research is unfortunate, as a sophisticated understanding of how these factors are linked will be critical to designing effective intervention programs. The primary research goal is to test whether acute social stress (i.e. rejection), as compared to non-social stress, elicits greater alcohol-relevant cognitions (i.e. approach to alcohol-relevant cues; desire to drink) among socially anxious female adolescents. Girls (14-17 years) high (n = 60) and low (n = 60) in SA will be randomly assigned to either a rejection or non-social stress task. In addition to main effects of group and condition, high SA girls following rejection are expected to show the greatest increase in alcohol-relevant cognitions. A secondary goal is to evaluate the indirect effects of key cognitive and psychobiological variables in this relation. Contemporary theory suggests that the anxiolytic effects of alcohol negatively reinforce consumption, thereby eliciting and maintaining use as an avoidance or escape technique in the context of social stress. Given the social nature of youth drinking contexts, learning to use alcohol in an effort to reduce socially-oriented negative affect may be particularly problematic. It is expected that a significant proportion of the relation between SA and the alcohol indices will be accounted for by the indirect effects through (1) disengagement coping (e.g., desire to escape), and (2) psychobiological stress responding (i.e. salivary alpha amylase/cortisol ratio), and that these relations will be primarily driven by those in the rejection condition. Lastly, participants will complete a brief follow- up assessment three months after the laboratory appointment; it is expected that (a) baseline SA will positively relate to coping-related drinking motives at follow-up, and (b) disengagement coping and psychobiological response to the laboratory stress tasks will partially account for this relation. The current study uses a convergence of sophisticated laboratory procedures to examine relevant mechanisms that may underlie alcohol use among socially anxious girls. As such, the project offers a rich training experience for student researchers, providing hands-on, guided exposure to an array of advanced research techniques, embedded within a successful, dynamic, and highly collaborative research program. This significant, innovative, and clinically relevant project will provide an excellent springboard for developing prevention-oriented programs as it seeks to better understand risk factor processes related to adolescent alcohol use, SA, and their co-morbidity; all of which represent key public health concerns.