Social Anxiety and Substance Use in College Students: Understanding the Potential Role of Substance Use Expectancies and Fear of Evaluation

The relationship between social anxiety and substance use among college students has been researched extensively, but it is difficult to understand this relationship due to the uncertainty imposed by mixed findings. However, most studies have found a positive link between social anxiety and alcohol use, as mediated by positive alcohol use expectancies. This study reviewed the literature on social anxiety and alcohol use expectancies and proposed a model that evaluated the predictive ability of social anxiety and alcohol use expectancies on alcohol use. Results indicated that social anxiety does not predict alcohol use and only negative alcohol use expectancies were found to be a statistically significant positive predictor of alcohol use among college students. With the legalization of the recreational use of cannabis products in many American states and given the limited research on the relationship between social anxiety and cannabis use, it is difficult to predict how cannabis use behaviors by socially anxious individuals will be affected. This study explored the predictive ability of social anxiety and cannabis use expectancies on cannabis use and found that social anxiety symptoms and positive cannabis use expectancies predicted cannabis use among college students. Finally, because social anxiety is a multifaceted construct, it is important to consider which specific facets contribute to substance use. The current study determined if fear of evaluation as an independent construct of social anxiety is a significant predictor of substance use (alcohol and cannabis). Fear of negative evaluation and fear of positive evaluation were found to be significant predictors of alcohol use, but their influence did not extend to cannabis use among college students