Personality, alcohol use, and drinking motives: a comparison of independent and combined internal drinking motives groups.
Heavy-drinking students who cite both coping and enhancement motives fly under the radar because they lack the high-neuroticism red flag.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Matson et al. (2009) asked college students why they drink.
They sorted students into groups: coping-only, enhancement-only, both, or neither.
Then they checked each group’s personality traits and weekly alcohol use.
What they found
Coping-only drinkers swallowed the most booze each week.
They also scored high on neuroticism—easily upset, often worried.
Surprise: students who drank for both coping and enhancement matched the high intake but looked calm on the personality test.
How this fits with other research
Galuska et al. (2006) saw the same link—high neuroticism pushes people toward coping styles—yet they studied parents of kids with disabilities, not drinkers.
Páez-Blarrina et al. (2008) and Rojahn et al. (1994) ran lab tests showing coping skills can be taught for pain and self-control, but L et al. simply watched natural motives, proving the trait-coping bond exists without any training.
Callanan et al. (2021), Liew et al. (2015), and Scott et al. (2023) all map student traits to anxiety; L et al. add alcohol as one hidden outlet, filling the missing piece of the college-stress puzzle.
Why it matters
On campus, the highest-risk drinkers no longer wear the obvious “anxious” badge. If you screen only for distressed mood, you will miss the combo-motive group who still drink heavily. Add a quick drinking-reasons question to your intake. Target interventions at coping skills, not just mood, and you may catch both shy worriers and their calm-looking, party-loving peers.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
It is well-established that coping and enhancement drinking motives predict college student drinking and that personality traits predict drinking motives. Little is known, however, about personality and drinking patterns among individuals who drink for both enhancement and coping reasons. University students in the current study completed questionnaires assessing personality, alcohol use, and drinking motives. Past year drinkers (N=138) were categorized into one of four groups: coping, enhancement, coping + enhancement, and noninternally motivated drinkers. Drinking was lower among noninternally motivated drinkers and higher among coping motivated drinkers; coping + enhancement motivated drinkers reported drinking at levels most consistent with the coping group. Coping motivated drinkers reported higher levels of neuroticism, negative affect, and anxiety sensitivity, and lower levels of positive affect; coping + enhancement motivated drinkers were not significantly different from the other groups on personality traits. Although coping + enhancement motivated drinkers may be at risk for problem drinking, they may be difficult to identify via personality measures.
Behavior modification, 2009 · doi:10.1177/0145445508322920