Attitudes and expectancies as predictors of drinking habits: a comparison of three scales

Research on expectations about the effects of alcohol has shown these expectancies to be related to drinking habits. Expectancies can be seen as components of attitudes toward alcohol, which are also related to drinking behavior. The relationships between attitudes, expectancies, and self-reported drinking behavior were examined. Three different measures of expectancies were included in order to compare their relative utility in predicting drinking variables. Two of the three measures performed equally in prediction. Although expectancies added significantly to explained variance in drinking when attitudes were controlled for, the increment was quite small. The improvement in prediction was larger when the measures of attitudes and behavior lacked correspondence. The results suggest that attention to the relationships between attitudes and expectancies can inform further research in this area.