Prior studies have suggested that affect lability might reduce the risk for problematic drinking among sensation seekers by compensating for their deficiencies in emotional reactivity and among individuals high on negative urgency by disrupting stable negative emotions. Due to the high prevalence of college drinking, this study examined whether affect lability interacted with sensation seeking and negative urgency to influence college student problematic drinking. 414 college drinkers (mean age: 20, 77% female, and 74% Caucasian) from a US Midwestern University completed self-administered questionnaires online. Consistent with our hypotheses, our results indicated that the effects of sensation seeking and negative urgency on problematic drinking weakened at higher levels of affect lability. These findings emphasize the importance of considering specific emotional contexts in understanding how negative urgency and sensation seeking create risk for problematic drinking among college students. These findings might also help us better understand how to reduce problematic drinking among sensation seekers and individuals high on negative urgency. 1. Introduction Young adult college students in the United States are at a heightened risk for alcohol use problems due to their hazardous patterns of alcohol use [1–4]. Particularly, among 14000 students from 119 universities, 31% endorsed criteria for alcohol abuse and 6% endorsed criteria for alcohol dependence [5]. However, few college students seek treatment for alcohol use problems [1, 5], suggesting a need to identify risk factors for problematic drinking among these students. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) has stated that these young adults have personality traits and psychological vulnerabilities that place them at increased risk for problems with alcohol [6]. The present study examined three traits that have been associated with problematic drinking: negative urgency (tendency to behave impulsively in face of strong negative emotions), sensation seeking (tendency to pursue stimulation through impulsive behaviors), and affect lability (rapidly changing affective states) [7, 8]. Sensation seekers are thought to use alcohol to attain stimulation [9], whereas individuals who are high on negative urgency might use alcohol to alleviate negative emotions [10], and affectively labile individuals might use alcohol to regulate affective fluctuations [7]. Even though these characteristics indicate different pathways for alcohol use, all three traits have been associated with problematic
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