Influence of personality traits and expectancies on alcohol consumption before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

It is known that alcohol is widely consumed by college students around the world and can induce health alterations. Therefore, it is important to identify risk factors for alcohol use. Additionally, the recently experienced global pandemic promoted great changes in people´s lifestyle and behavior. Thus, this work aimed to study alcohol consumption in Argentinean college students and possible relationships between personality and alcohol expectancies with alcohol use, before and during the lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic. Argentinean college students (N= 1696; 75.3% women; Mean age= 23.25 ± 2.64) completed an online survey. Results showed that college students consumed a large amount of alcohol per occasion and per month, especially men. However, a greater percentage of women reported heavy episodic drinking. In addition, it seems that certain traits and expectations promoted alcohol use (e.g. extraversion, neuroticism, sociability, relaxation, sexuality, risk and aggression and negative mood), while others decreased it (e.g. openness, agreeableness, responsibility and cognitive and behavioral impairment). Finally, alcohol use and some expectancies (e.g. relaxation, negative mood and risk and aggression) significantly changed during the lockdown. Therefore, present results evidenced that alcohol is widely consumed by Argentinean college students, suggesting that health systems should be aware about its possible negative consequences. Furthermore, it should be considered both the influence of personal factors such as personality and expectancies and the general social aspects such as the lockdown -that could modify alcohol use and the influence of expectancies on consumption- to devise prevention and intervention strategies aimed to reduce alcohol use.Keywords