Learning About Drinking

Eleni Houghton, Anne M. Roche

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134945771
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Consulenza psicoterapeutica

This book is based on the premise that drinking behaviors are primarily learned. The contributors to the book explore the complex array of individual and social factors that impact the development of drinking patterns. They traverse family and culture influences, and the role played by schools, government, and the beverage alcohol industry.
Learning About Drinking offers a rigorous and scholarly examination of drinking behavior brought to life with illustrative cases drawn from around the world. Social policymakers, historians, anthropologists, public health specialists, as well as mental health professionals will find this book of value. Learning About Drinking offers a refreshing, evidence-based look at a process that has too often been taken for granted.

Chapter 1

Drinking Behavior: A Multifaceted and Multiphasic Phenomenon

Ann M. Roche

The central premise of this book is that drinking¹ behaviors are primarily learned behaviors. As such, they are subject to a range of processes and forces that influence learning experiences. To date, relatively little emphasis has been placed on the learning experiences of young persons in relation to the way they develop drinking behaviors, styles, and patterns.

Most research about this ubiquitous form of human activity has been developed from a problems-based perspective. Comparatively little has been published about alcohol that has not been written from the perspective of its negative consequences (Douglas, 1987). Much of the research on alcohol and family life has been conducted on abnormal populations, where one or more family members are in contact with a service because of an identified drink problem (Wright, 1999). In general, there has been a preoccupation with alcohol-related problems, while nonpathological drinking patterns, practices, and behaviors have been largely ignored (Pittman, 1967). Overall, we know considerably more about drinking problems than we do about the development of low-risk drinking behaviors. More importantly, we know relatively little about resilience, protective factors, and their acquisition (Doll & Lyon, 1998). There is great scope for gaining a better understanding of how we can be more effective in minimizing problems associated with alcohol.

This book will explore the multifaceted phenomenon of learning about drinking. It will explore the various ways in which people learn about alcohol and drinking. In doing so, it will traverse encounters with alcohol at various life stages. Examination of the individual’s experience of alcohol and drinking will be located within a social and cultural context. Our experiences of learning about drinking are a function of a multitude of factors, not the least of which is the place and position alcohol holds in any given society and social structure.

Decisions to drink, or not to drink, are shaped to some extent by observation of others around us, and especially by those we value most, e.g., parents, friends, and peers. The groups of individuals we value most and are the more influential members of our social sphere change over time and throughout the life span. Throughout this chapter we will examine some of these influential social forces and the manner in which their influence operates at different points in a person’s life.

An examination of the ways in which different people at different points in their life learn to incorporate drinking in their day-to-day routine may help to inform us how to better use alcohol in nonproblematic ways in the future.

It is also noted at the outset that many people across all societies choose, for a variety of reasons, not to drink. This option is fully acknowledged, respected, and valued throughout all chapters of this book as a valid and appropriate life choice. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as implying anything other than validation of this position. Hence, the book is not predicated on the notion that people should drink. Rather it stems from a position that many people in most societies do so and that learning to do so in the most low-risk manner possible is an intrinsically valuable thing to seek to achieve.

PATTERNS OF DRINKING

In recent years, the individual’s pattern of drinking has increasingly been held to be more important than the sheer volume of alcohol consumed. In some ways this book provides a companion volume to an earlier publication Patterns of Drinking (Litvak & Grant, 1998). Patterns of alcohol consumption vary greatly and comprise a remarkably varied set of drinking terrains. It has been argued that to know how any group of individuals drinks is as necessary for an understanding of the times as to know how much they drink. The manner in which particular patterns of drinking are acquired reflects our social and individual experiences with alcohol.

The terms “patterns” is taken to include the biomedical and psychosocial factors that may contribute to consequences of specific drinking patterns and may serve as predictors of risk or benefits associated with drinking. “Patterns” also refers to several aspects of drinking behavior, including temporal variations in drinking, the number and characteristics of heavy drinking occasions, the setting where drinking takes place, the activities associated with drinking, the personal characteristics of the drinkers and their drinking confederates, the types of beverages consumed, and the clusters of drinking norms and behaviors often referred to as drinking cultures (Single & Leino, 1998).

To examine lifetime drinking patterns requires us to comprehend shared understandings, values, and beliefs surrounding the place and role of alcohol in a given society. It requires a broad investigative sweep allowing for the inclusion of the culturally and socially constructed meanings attached to alcohol. That is, when examining drinking and the way we learn about drinking, we are also examining our own cultural complexity. Heterogeneity is the overriding characteristic of drinking patterns. They vary across different countries, cultures, communities, and individual life spans. Specific experiences with and exposure to drinking are equally varied, but the mechanisms and pathways by which we learn about drinking tend to be universal in nature.

In this introductory chapter, four separate, but overlapping, sections are presented. They cover

(a) aspects of learning in general,

(b) the sociocultural dimensions of learning about drinking,

(c) the impact of an individual’s beliefs and expectations on his or her drinking behaviors,

(d) drinking across the life span.

Each of these sections offers an overview rather than an exhaustive exploration, as later chapters will also address some of these issues in more detail. This chapter therefore sets the scene for much of what follows in subsequent chapters.

LEARNING DEFINITIONS AND THEORIES

It is useful to commence with a clarification of what is meant here by the term “learning.” In the current context, the term “learning” is used in its widest sense. It encompasses a broad range of factors and experiences that shape human behavior, and it should not be interpreted as referring just to formal education. Indeed, the process of learning about drinking has very little to do with formal education and training programs. The question whether drinking behavior is amenable to formal education will be addressed later.

Every experience of being in the world is a “learning experience.” Every aspect of our social or personal world conveys messages, either covertly or overtly, and it is the receiving, interpreting, and interacting that occurs which forms our learning experiences. Learning has been defined as changes in behavior resulting from experience (Lefrancois, 1972). In this sense, the terms “learning” and “behavior” are seen to be, if not synonymous, then symbiotic.

Much effort has been directed at explaining, predicting, and controlling behavior, and in particular, drinking behavior. It is assumed from this perspective that behavior is subject to certain rules, that it is affected in certain predictable ways by experience, and is generally not subject to erratic, random forces. Many of these same assumptions underpin the work presented here on learning and drinking. That is, drinking behaviors will occur in a reasonably predictable fashion that reflects sets of social, environmental, and individual characteristics and circumstances.

It has been observed for some time that many patterns of behavior within a given culture or community are collective in nature. It is the group that establishes the norms for acceptable behavior and, by and large, individuals comply with these group norms. Changes that occur usually occur on a collective basis. While on one level this is an incomplete view of human behavior, it is nonetheless important in this context to recognize the social and cultural nature of most alcohol consumption and the complex array of external forces that operate to influence patterns of consumption.

There is a well-established view among social psychologists that an individual operates within a social field which includes both the physical environment and other people. In the early 1950’s, Kurt Lewin (1951) proposed that behavior is a function of the interaction between the person and the environment. It is this interaction between the person and his or her environment that is of fundamental importance in the learning process. Aspects of the individual, the group, and the environment have an impact on the way we learn about drinking.

Sargent (1979), in her book Drinking and Alcoholism in Australia, which provided a sociological analysis of drinking there, called one chapter “Making the Drinker: Learning Drinking Patterns.” Her title underscores the role that learning has in the acquisition of our knowledge and understanding about what alcohol is and how it can be used. Sargent goes on to illustrate this point by contrasting Irish and Jewish styles of drinking, and in doing so highlights the role of learning:

Differences between the two cultural patterns [which] include vastly different attitudes, beliefs, customs, and socialization methods. While Jewish children learn a ‘ritual’ attitude centred on sobriety as a semi-religious value, Irish children learn a ‘utilitarian’ attitude which holds that almost any individual, self-centered reason for drinking is socially acceptable, even when it means getting drunk now and then (Sargent, 1979, p. 21).

Ten Assumptions About Learning

1 Human beings have a natural potentiality for learning.

2 Significant learning takes place when the subject matter is perceived by the subject as having relevance for his or her own purposes.

3 Learning that involves a change in self-organization—in the perception of one’s self—is threatening and tends to be resisted.

4 Learning that is threatening to the self is more easily perceived and assimilated when external threats are at a minimum.

5 Students learn better when not threatened.

6 Students learn better by doing.

7 Learning is facilitated when the student participates responsibly in the learning process.

8 Self-initiated learning which involves the whole person of the learner—feelings as well as intellect—is the most lasting and persuasive.

9 Independence, creativity, and self-reliance are all facilitated when self-criticism and self-evaluation are basic and evaluation by others is of secondary importance.

10 The most socially useful learning in the modern world is the learning of the process of learning.

Source: Carl Rogers (1983).

In addition to the learning that occurs in the group context, there is also learning at the personal or individual level. The text box, which summarizes Carl Rogers’ well-known principles of learning, highlights some of the key characteristics of learning at the individual level. In an overview of the impact of learned behavior on an individual’s conditioned responses to the use of various psychoactive substances, Siegal (1999) has recently highlighted the extent to which “It has become increasingly apparent that learning contributes to many effects of drugs” (p. 1121). For instance, certain responses to alcohol, such as tolerance, vary considerably according to where we usually drink and under what circumstances, and the extent to which we have learnt to associate certain responses to drinking with particular settings and circumstances. Such responses to alcohol are not fixed in a formulaic sense (i.e., dose x = response y); rather there is a complex interaction that occurs which determines the outcome for each individual and on each specific occasion. The outcomes of these interactions also change not just with context but over time. The learning process is thus both complex, subjective and highly variable.

How we learn to know, internalize, understand, and exhibit the values and behaviors of our specific culture in relation to alcohol requires closer attention and explication. To examine how people learn about drinking, it is necessary to review selected models, and to consider what people/things/factors act as reinforcers. The first step in this process involves consideration of relevant theories and explanatory models.

Social Learning Theory

One of the better known and widely accepted explanatory frameworks for alcohol use, especially in relation to young people, is social learning theory (Bandura, 1977). Social learning theory is one of the dominant theoretical models that operates in learning any new behavior. Its fundamental premise is that people behave in the way they do largely because they learn to behave in that way. Learning can take place on a number of levels and in a multitude of ways. Social learning theory attempts to encapsulate the range of ways in which people learn—it incorporates conditioning at one extreme through to reflection at the other.

This theory holds that we learn about alcohol largely by observing and modeling the attitudes and behaviors of parents and friends, and through being rewarded or punished by these socializing agents. Bandura (1977) maintains that people learn through a process of observation and imitation of role models, and that role models and adolescents’ perceptions of alcohol norms serve as social influences for drinking alcohol. Further, family members, friends, peers, and other adults also serve as role models for adolescents.

Lord Chesterfield is reputed to have stated that “We are, in truth, more than half what we are by imitation.” Heather and Robertson (1989) ask why we imitate others so often, so thoroughly, and sometimes with apparent negative consequences. They suggest that the answer may be that, in evolutionary terms, doing as others do (i.e., modeling) has been the best way of surviving. Young members of the species copied their parents or died; they ran when their peers ran on the assumption that they knew something that the young did not; they found where food was by watching where others went. Children learn a huge part of their behavioral repertoire by observing parents.

Observational learning, or imitation, is central to the processes of socialization. Bandura (1969) argues that one of the fundamental means by which new modes of behavior are acquired and existing patterns modified is through observational learning. Social learning involves the acquisition of behavior patterns which society expects. Socially acceptable behavior varies from culture to culture, and also from person to person within a culture, the latter largely being determined by role or occupation, gender, age, status, and position in society. Hence, individuals undergo constant exposure to socially accepted or expect...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editors’ Biographies
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Drinking Behavior: A Multifaceted and Multiphasic Phenomenon
• Chapter 2: Acquiring the Competence to Drink Responsibly
• Chapter 3: Family and Cultural Influences on Alcohol and Young People
• Chapter 4: Alcohol Influences: The Role of Family and Peers
• Chapter 5: Religious Influences on Drinking: Illustrations From Select Groups
• Chapter 6: Learning by Experiment
• Chapter 7: Past Influences, Current Issues, Future Research Directions
• Chapter 8: Multiple Influences on Adolescents
• Chapter 9: Formal Education
• Chapter 10: The Role of the Media
• Chapter 11: The Role of Government and the Law
• Chapter 12: The Beverage Alcohol Industry and Learning About Drinking
• Chapter 13: Conclusion
• Index