Cognitive and Affective Empathy in Binge-Drinking during Late Adolescence

Empathy–the ability to understand and share the feelings of others–has been identifiedas a potential correlate of binge drinking behaviors in adolescence. Our preregistered studyaimed to investigate the relationship between cognitive and affective empathy and alcoholconsumption in late adolescence. Building on prior research, we predicted a dissociation ofcognitive and affective empathy related to alcohol consumption. Specifically, we hypothesizedthat whereas a negative association between affective empathy and alcohol consumption wouldemerge, no significant association would be observed for cognitive empathy. To test thesehypotheses, we surveyed a convenience sample of U.S. college students (N = 116; ages 18-23;73.28 % women). The online survey comprised questions assessing drinking behavior(categorized as non-binge drinking, binge drinking, and extreme binge drinking), engagement inhazardous drinking behavior (continuous measure), and self-reported empathic traits.We found that binge drinking categories and hazardous drinking scores were closelyaligned, suggesting that the two measures capture similar aspects of drinking behavior. Menreported more problematic drinking patterns than women, who also tended to show higheraffective empathy. Age was positively related to hazardous drinking, with participants at theupper end of the age range reporting riskier alcohol use. Contrary to our preregisteredhypotheses, we found no significant relationship between affective empathy and engagement inbinge drinking or hazardous drinking among late adolescents. Cognitive empathy, as predicted,was not related to the extremity of alcohol consumption. Additionally, we observed a strikingpattern in our data: 20.69 % of our sample indicated extreme binge drinking (EBD), which issignificantly higher than the 12% reported by a U.S. national survey conducted in 2020. Whilethe relationship between drinking behavior and empathy may be more nuanced than expected,the observed disparity in EBD behavior emphasizes the importance of addressing its prevalencewithin U.S. college communities and implementing proactive measures to promote responsiblealcohol consumption during late adolescence.