Coping Motives for Alcohol and Cannabis Use Better Reflect Negative Emotionality Than Emotion Regulation Deficits in...

Motivational models argue that people use alcohol and cannabis to regulate emotions. Descriptions of global self-reports of coping motives have emphasized their role as a reflexive or disengagement emotion regulation strategy focused on avoiding stressors or negative emotions, and on building emotion regulation skills, with regard to their clinical implications. However, there is also substantial evidence that self-reports of coping motives reflect a broader tendency toward negative emotionality.

We used data from two large ecological momentary assessment (EMA) studies of regularly drinking and cannabis-using young adults (ages 18-22, n = 297) to test the convergent, divergent, and criterion validity of global self-reports of coping motives across both global self-report and daily life data.

Pre-registered analyses demonstrated that global self-reports of coping motives for alcohol and cannabis use were at best weakly associated with global and EMA reports of reflexive or disengagement emotion regulation strategy use and were also moderately associated with both global and EMA measures of negative emotionality, emotion reactivity, and negative urgency.

These findings undermine the assertion that coping motives reflect deficits in adaptive emotion regulation strategies rather than a broad tendency toward negative affectivity. Research should seek to understand what global self-reports of coping motives reflect.