A new study finds the college students exaggerate the amount their friends drink when they discuss it.
According to new research by Clayton Neighbors, a professor at the University of Houston:
College students drink more alcohol than any other segment in the population, leading at times to negative consequences from missing class, risky sexual behavior, depression, driving under the influence, trouble with authorities, injuries and even fatalities. We have established in previous research studies that students overestimate drinking by their peers, and that influences their own drinking. If you can change those perceptions, you can change their drinking.
This matters because if students think their friends are drinking more, they will consume more to try and keep up to their peers’ (fictional) drinking prowess.
Or something. Neighbors also said that “most students actually drink no more than three or four drinks per week, but most students think their peers are drinking much more.”
But then, if most students drink no more than three or four drinks a week, who cares about the exaggeration? Three or four doesn’t sound like a problem at all.
