Challenging Alcohol Expectancies in a Classroom Setting: A Review of Theory and Practice

www.medialiteracy.net The beliefs people have about the effects of alcohol, known in the field as alcohol expectancies, contributes to the decision to drink as well as the amount consumed when drinking. Simply put, an expectancy is a belief a person holds about events in the world. Expectancies are held about nearly every situation a person encounters. When a person goes to church, he or she may expect that it’s appropriate to dress nice, speak in hushed tones, and avoid profane language. These beliefs will then dictate how a person would act in church. She or he would dress up in their “Sunday Best, ” not raise their voice, and speak more politely than normal. A person learns expectancies from their families, their peers, and exposure to media. Expectancy theory has emerged as a viable explanation for a wide variety of psychological phenomena (see Goldman, 1999). In all applications, expectancy refers to information stored in memory of a systematic “if-then ” relationship between events in some upcoming situation. For example, “IF I run this red light, THEN I may get a ticket ” or “IF I drink this beer, THEN I will be more outgoing. ” One advantage of these models is that they refer to processes across the full domain of behavior, and not just to pathological behavior. Hence, they can accommodate processes that influence both episodi