Peer behavior and drinking habits intersect differently for young and older adults

An online study involving an international sample of adolescent and adult alcohol users found that in social non-alcohol drinking settings, younger participants experiencing greater social attunement reported more overall alcohol use. It was the opposite in older individuals, in whom greater social attunement was associated with less alcohol consumption. In a social non-drinking setting, social attunement was associated with more alcohol use among older participants, but with less use among younger ones. The paper was published in Addictive Behaviors.

Social attunement is the extent to which an individual aligns their behavior to harmonize with a social environment without explicit social pressure. It is the tendency to notice, interpret, and adjust one’s behavior to other people’s reactions, expectations, and social norms. Social attunement helps people coordinate with others and gain acceptance within a group. It can be explicit, when a person consciously changes behavior in response to peers, or implicit, when the adjustment occurs automatically.

Some studies have linked social attunement to alcohol use and related problems. In drinking situations, people may adapt how much they drink according to how much their friends drink or appear to approve of drinking. Someone who is highly socially attuned may drink more when peers encourage alcohol use or treat heavy drinking as normal. The same tendency may reduce alcohol consumption when friends disapprove of drinking or support moderation.

Adolescents and young adults may be especially sensitive to such influence because social acceptance and peer belonging are particularly important during these developmental periods. Perceived drinking norms also matter, because people may increase their consumption when they mistakenly believe that most of their peers drink heavily.

Christophe Romein, a researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and colleagues assessed whether high social attunement to peer alcohol use during late adolescence and early adulthood is linked with increased alcohol consumption and related problems. They also explored the role of gender in relation to age and social attunement. In this particular study, social attunement was measured as a change in willingness to drink alcohol in different social settings after being presented with information about the willingness of fictitious peers to drink alcohol in those same scenarios.

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Study participants were 811 individuals recruited in two study waves. The first wave was conducted in 2022 and involved 534 participants, while wave two involved 277 participants recruited in 2023 and 2024. Because the authors focused on alcohol drinkers, they excluded candidates who did not drink alcohol, those who failed to complete the main task, and non-binary participants, since the small number of non-binary individuals prevented accurate statistical estimates for that group.

After these exclusions, the final sample consisted of 683 individuals. Participants were recruited via social media, from a university participant pool in the Netherlands, and through in-person flyer distribution. Participants for the second wave were also recruited through an online research platform. The recruitment ads targeted cannabis and alcohol users over 15 years of age.

Study participants completed an implicit social attunement task. In this task, they viewed 45 images showing an equal number of social alcohol drinking situations, social non-alcohol drinking situations where people drink beverages like soda, and social non-drinking settings where no drinks are present. After each image, participants were asked to rate their willingness to consume alcohol in the situation depicted.

Immediately after responding, participants were shown fictitious peer feedback about how willing a peer group was to drink in that situation. There were six situations where the feedback matched participants’ willingness to drink, and 39 situations where peer feedback indicated either higher or lower willingness. After completing a short memory task, participants viewed the same images and indicated their willingness to drink alcohol again.

Based on how much their willingness to drink alcohol changed after viewing peer feedback, the authors derived two social attunement scores. One score showed how much participants’ willingness to drink alcohol changed in situations where peer feedback indicated higher willingness to drink. The other score showed how much it changed in situations where peer feedback indicated lower willingness to drink.

The scientists calculated both scores for each of the three types of situations. Participants also completed an assessment of alcohol use disorder symptoms, an assessment of the number of standard units of alcohol, cannabis, and cigarettes they consumed in the past two weeks, and one question about binge drinking.

Results indicated no interactions between social attunement and age in predicting alcohol use overall when looking at specific positive or negative peer feedback. However, there were some interactions between age and social attunement when combining the overall responses for each social setting. In social non-alcohol drinking situations, younger participants experiencing greater overall social attunement reported more alcohol use. In those same situations, older adults experiencing greater social attunement reported less alcohol use.

In contrast, in social non-drinking situations, younger participants showing greater social attunement reported less alcohol use. Older participants with greater social attunement in these settings tended to report more alcohol use. The researchers noted that they did not find the results for gender to be statistically significant, suggesting social attunement operates similarly across genders in these contexts.

“Depending on age and social setting, SA [social attunement] can both be a risk- or protective factor for alcohol use,” the authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the factors associated with alcohol use. It should be noted that the study involved participants’ self-reports and did not measure actual observations of real-world drinking behaviors. The cross-sectional design also prevents scientists from determining whether these behaviors actually shift within individuals as they age over time.

The paper “Social attunement and alcohol use: The role of age and gender” was authored by Christophe Romein, Karis Colyer-Patel, Emese Kroon, Helle Larsen, Hanan El Marroun, and Janna Cousijn.