Working with Collegiate Drinkers: The Art of Gentle Persuasion

Initiating conversations with contemporary college students is not as difficult as some may imagine. A number of essays published on this blog have addressed how to increase the likelihood that students will actually talk with and listen to “nonstudents,” A.K.A., counselors, coaches, faculty, parents, health educators, and ‘miscellaneous others.’” This essay will consider employing simple techniques based on principles of social psychology and designed to persuade students to consider acting on our suggestions once we have engaged them in conversation.

We human beings are fascinating creatures. Unique in the animal kingdom for a number of reasons but none more pronounced nor as universally accepted as the presence of our “big brains.” Our ability to think and reason sets us apart from almost all other creatures and our sentience or sense of self-awareness coupled with the ability to grasp our position in the space-time continuum has enabled us to not only think and reason but to connect the past with the future by means of the “thinking” we do in the present. Our ability to do so, as some will surely agree, makes us wonderful storytellers. Some therapists actually refer to the counseling they provide as presenting individuals with a means by which to rewrite their stories thereby making therapy a proactive quest for solutions rather than a reactive post-mortem on problems.

College students, like all of us, are “storytellers,” although frequently they view their lives as a collection of independent short stories rather than an epic novel where each story is but another chapter that contributes to overall plot development. Persuading students to modify their stories in such a way as to reduce the likelihood that the protagonist…our student-hero…avoids experiencing untoward consequences during her or his quest through life helps students avoid writing a tragedy rather than the intended drama. Fortunately, social psychology has provided us with numerous helpful insights to human nature that can guide our work with students.

This first essay in what I intend to be a series concerns itself with two of these insights, the Foot in the Door (FITD) and Door in the Face (DITF) principles of human behavior. Each principle works on the unconscious and tends to affect how we respond to a request received from another. Consequently, understanding these principles and then employing them properly can prepare those who work with college students to persuade students to choose lower-risk options during their collegiate experience. NOTE: The focus is on student choice rather than practitioner coercion.

FITD suggests that by making a small request first, the likelihood that agreement with a subsequent larger request will follow. For example, providing a neighbor with a ride to the local bus stop when asked may result in agreeing to a subsequent request to pick the neighbor up at the airport 20-miles away. This particular persuasive technique might be used by a health educator who is interviewing a college student. Obtaining the student’s permission to conduct a routine health screening as part of an intake may result in the student agreeing to maintain a drinking or smoking log during the time between appointments.

The DITF suggests that when receiving a particularly large request that is refused, a subsequent smaller request, the one the petitioner actually desires, may well be granted. For example, your neighbor asks if he can borrow your car for several hours to drive into the city; you decline. He/she then asks if you will provide a ride to the local metro stop to catch the train and you agree. This persuasive technique might be employed by a counselor in the college counseling center whose client has just acknowledged engaging in unsafe sexual practices. The counselor asks the student if he/she will abstain from sex; the student declines. The counselor then asks if the student will use or insist on the use of a condom; the student agrees.

A case in point: I once saw a graduating senior who opted to meet with me following a minor alcohol violation rather than pay a $200 fine. The student was on the dean’s list, graduating on time, and was offered a position at the company where he did his co-op where his starting salary would be more than I was making with a Ph.D. after 30 years! This student did not have an alcohol problem. That said, he was a very risky drinker. When outlining his risk and suggesting that he reduce his 10-beers, 3X/week to 2 beers on each of no more than 2 outings per week, he respectfully declined. When asked if he would cut his drinking in half—especially after we calculated the number of calories he was consuming when drinking 30 12-oz beers per week—he agreed and together we worked out a plan to accomplish this reduction.

When treated with respect by practitioners who understand some of the basic principles of social psychology, persuading college students to “do the right thing” does not have to be as daunting as it may seem. Although not every student will yield to every technique, strategy, or approach that we employ, enough will so as to make the investment of time and planning worth the effort.

Dr. Robert

Is Preventing College Drinking Like the Tail Wagging the Dog?

For better than 25-years, those concerned about the academic success and well-being of collegians have viewed the prevention of high-risk and dangerous drinking as a top priority. Social scientists have provided valuable insight as to ways to reduce high-risk drinking as well as effective ways to intercede with those students as well as present them with opportunities to review their choices and moderate their consumption. This, as one can imagine, is the "good news" in a good-news-bad-news consideration of contemporary collegiate life. The "bad news," unfortunately, is that high-risk drinking remains near the top of issues that threaten student success in the pursuit of a post-secondary education.

Even a cursory review of the collegiate drinking literature quickly reveals that researchers and student affairs professionals alike have focused almost exclusively on addressing "the problem." Little if any attention is paid to the behavior of those students who are either moderate in their consumption of alcohol or abstain altogether. Ironically, our efforts to develop prevention strategies may well have contributed, albeit unintentionally, to the apparently intractable nature of high-risk and dangerous collegiate drinking.

By exclusively defining prevention as efforts to moderate student consumption and reduce untoward incidents related to drinking, we inadvertently make the behavior of a minority of college students--albeit a sizable minority--the focus of attention and the issue of primacy when considering collegiate drinking. As Jung once famously quipped, that which you resist persists. In essence, all "collegiate drinking" becomes the problem rather than the high-risk and dangerous drinking that some collegians do--to read more on this, see my monograph, When They Drink: Is Collegiate Drinking the Problem We Think It Is? 

To paraphrase an old cliche, to focus all efforts on trying to stop collegiate drinking...or even trying to stop the minority of students who engage in frequent episodes of high-risk and dangerous drinking (1)...is akin to the "tail wagging the dog." There is much we can learn from listening to what the majority of students who use alcohol moderately or not at all can tell us about why they choose to drink moderately or abstain. If we understood those reasons and directed that knowledge toward efforts to promote low-risk drinking--which includes knowing when to abstain as well as how to moderate consumption when choosing to drink--we may well take efforts designed to foster student wellness to the next level. This is a classic example of moving towards the light rather than away from the darkness.

Broadening our focus from exclusively "preventing high-risk behavior" to also pursuing the "promotion of low-risk behavior" may well enable us to move even closer to the "holy grail" of significantly reducing high-risk and dangerous collegiate drinking even further. NOTE: I do not advocate abandoning what preventionists have been doing for decades but rather, broadening the spectrum and adding to it.

Although an optimist, I am also pragmatic. I realize that there will likely never be a time when there is "zero" high-risk and dangerous drinking on college and university campuses. Just as college students have consumed alcohol for the last 300-years, so will they continue to do so in the future. With that continued drinking comes the consequences associated when consuming to excess. That said, if collegiate drinking is not so much the problem but it is the drinking some collegians do that is, then it is entirely possible that although collegiate drinking continues, a quantifiable reduction in high-risk and dangerous drinking can take place. Realizing this change, however, will likely only occur if and when we broaden our approach to addressing issues of collegiate drinking by focusing as much on the promotion of low-risk behaviors as we currently do on preventing the high-risk.

What do you think?

Dr. Robert

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1 if you have not already guessed, I loathe the term "binge drinking," defined as 5+ drinks for men and 4+ drinks for women - to read more on this March 2010 blog post