Moderation in excess: binge drinking and social interaction among college students

The research on the relationships between sociability and alcohol consumption has produced inconsistent findings, leading some to conclude that there are no such relationships. However, this research has tended to focus on sociability as a personality construct, not sociability defined as social activity. In the present study, college students (N = 90) used a social interaction diary to provide measures of their social activity, and they provided descriptions of their total alcohol consumption and of their frequency of binge drinking. Although total consumption per se was not reliably related to the quality or quantity of participants' social lives, frequency of binge drinking was related to some aspects of social interaction. Specifically, participants who had no binge-drinking episodes reported less intimacy and less disclosure in their interactions than those who had some episodes. However, men who reported having three or more binge episodes per week experienced less intimacy in their interactions than any other group of men or women. It is possible that because some binge drinking is normative and may be seen as desirable among college students, students who have a more normative number of binge-drinking episodes are integrated more fully into the college community than students who have no episodes or too many episodes.