Social distance, perceived drinking by peers, and alcohol use by college students

Many colteges in the United States are employing social norms marketing campaigns with the goal of reducing college students ' alcohol use by correcting misperceptions about their peers' alcohol use. Although the typical message used in these campaigns describes the quantity and frequency of alcohol use by the average student on campus, many students may fmd such a vague comparison to others to be socially irrelevant. This study compares the relative weight of perceptions about alcohol use by distant versus proximate peers in the prediction of college stu-dents ' personal drinking behavior. The results of analyzing data collected from a sample of col-lege students at a large public northeastern university (N=276) show that, as hypothesized, per-ceived alcohol use by proximate peers (best friends and friends) was a stronger predictor of students ' personal alcohol use than perceived alcohol use by more distant peers (such as stu-dents in general), controlling for other strong predictors of alcohol use by college students (age, gender, race, off-campus residency, and sensation-seeking tendencies). The implications of these findings for the design of more effective social norms messages are discussed. One well documented phenomenon in the college drinking literature is that misperceptions ahout alcohol use hy peers tend to increase with increasing social distance (e.g., Baer