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Category: Project

Description: Influential psychological theories hypothesize that people consume alcohol in response to the experience of both negative and positive emotions. Interventions aimed at reducing problematic drinking often are designed to target this affect-alcohol association. However, it remains unclear whether such patterns of emotional drinking are common in everyday life. In this meta-analysis, we synthesized the evidence for the daily associations between affect and alcohol use in individual participant data from 69 studies (N = 12,394), which used daily and momentary surveys to assess affect and alcoholic drinks consumed. Results indicate that people do not drink more often on days they experience high negative affect, but are more likely to drink and drink heavily on days high in positive affect. Based on our findings, we collectively propose an agenda for future research to explore open questions surrounding affect and alcohol use.