Meta-emotions as predictors of drinking to cope: a comparison of competing models

To further elucidate how individual differences in the frequency with which people get upset about having negative emotions (i.e., meta-emotions) and how often they experience negative emotions (i.e., trait emotions) are related to drinking to cope, we tested direct and mediated path models predicting drinking to cope in a sample of emerging adult drinkers. We hypothesized that the mediated model would find more support, such that anxiety sensitivity and non-acceptance (meta-emotions) would be indirectly related to drinking to cope via associations with trait anxiety and trait nonanxious negative affect (trait emotions), respectively. Both models were tested with bootstrapping using concurrently measured self-report data from 544 college-enrolled emerging adults. Although both the mediated and direct models yielded acceptable fit indices, only the predictions of the mediated model were supported and findings suggest that non-acceptance might be more strongly related than anxiety sensitivity to drinking to cope. If replicated using better controlled idiographic paradigms, the present results would support a novel model of the relation between secondary negative emotions and emotion-focused coping and might suggest that interventions that target meta-emotion could be effective among emerging adult alcohol misusers.