Manifestation of Drinking Profiles in Daily Life: Associations With Momentary Negative Affect, Impulsivity, and Drinking

Abstract

Background

Negative affect and impulsivity can influence one another and have momentary influences on emerging adult drinking behaviors. Heterogeneity in drinking patterns/profiles, such as frequent heavy or light drinking, may also reflect differences in these momentary effects potentially due to distinct putative drinking mechanisms.

Methods

Emerging adults (N = 366; 64.4% women) with at least one binge drinking episode in the past 30 days completed a baseline survey and 14-day ecological momentary assessments (EMA) with multiple daily surveys (n ≥ 7; M = 5.33). Latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to identify alcohol use patterns from baseline surveys. Next, multilevel models examined negative affectivity and impulsivity on momentary drinking and the number of drinks consumed using the full sample and the LPA drinking profiles.

Results

LPA identified three drinking profiles: (1) low binge drinkers; (2) moderate binge drinkers; and (3) heavy binge drinkers. Multilevel models revealed that for the full sample and among low and moderate binge drinkers, negative affect significantly predicted lower chances of drinking in the moment, while the impulsivity facets of urgency and sensation-seeking predicted greater chances of momentary drinking. Urgency and sensation-seeking also served as significant mediators that suppressed the negative association from negative affect on momentary drinking. For the heavy binge drinkers, only negative affect significantly predicted lower chances of drinking in the moment. Similar effects were observed for momentary drink number models.

Conclusions

Identifying latent alcohol use profiles and targeting approaches to reduce momentary impulsivity via approaches such as just-in-time adaptive intervention may provide prevention opportunities for low and moderate binge drinkers at risk for developing more severe alcohol use problems and disorders. For those who may be in the early stages of developing alcohol use disorders (i.e., the heavy binge drinking sample), alternative intervention approaches utilizing motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral therapy for alcohol use may be more appropriate.