Clinical treatment research suggests that correcting misperceptions concerning the prevalence of binge drinking should reliably affect binge drinking. Three laboratory experiments to be conducted over a period of 4-1/2 years will progressively address how adding different contextual factors to the delivery of prevalence information will impact college students' information processing and subsequent beliefs. The impact of these contextual factors on drinking also will be examined at a six-week follow-up (in Experiments 2 and 3) and a one-year follow-up (Experiment 3). The impact of prevalence information is proposed to depend upon the extent that the varying contexts induce more or less objective information processing. Individual differences in drinking should objectively matter more for certain types of judgements than others. Thus, individual differences in drinking are expected to moderate the obtained findings, depending on the context for delivering this normative information and the specific dependent measure. Three different context effects will be examined across experiments. First, this impact of presenting the normative information alone outside of a self-focusing or evaluative context, is expected to lead to more objective information processing. Second, contrary to what a self-regulation model of objective information processing would predict, but in line with preliminary findings, the addition of an unexpected self-focus manipulation to the presentation of this normative information is expected to lead to more self-serving processing of information, resulting in more biased judgements. Third, the added impact of an evaluative context will be examined by either reminding students that their drinking behavior has implications concerning their personalities or by labeling their drinking. His context should similarly lead to self-serving information processing. Experiment 2 also will go beyond Experiment 1 to examine the moderating influence of delaying the dependent measures on the strength of the context effects observed and the extent that they lead to sustained change. Experiment 3 also will examine the moderating influence of framing the consequences associated with binge drinking. The latter two experiments will examine the mediating roles of both problem recognition and social acceptability judgements on binge drinking. Finally, secondary hypotheses will examine the moderating role of self-deceptive denial and self-deceptive enhancement in qualifying the findings. Results will have direct implications for both designing and implementing interventions for the prevention and treatment of alcohol abuse.
