Drinking Frequency and Basic Values Across Europe
Maksim Rudnev1,2 Christin-Melanie Vauclair2
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National Research University Higher School of Economics
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Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CIS-IUL, Lisboa, Portugal
Abstract
Theoretically, tight cultures prevent people from expressing their values with their behaviors, whereas loose cultures promote it. However, with frequency of drinking it is reversed.
Previous studies
Individual-level
| SE | CO | TR | BE | UN | SD | ST | HE | AC | PO | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Out of 10 studies | 6– | 7– | 7– | 3– | 5– | 3+ | 7+ | 6+ | 2+/1– | 3+/1– |
Drinking motives studies (e.g. Kuntsche et al., 2014): social (+), enjoyment (+), coping (-) and stress (-) motives are related to higher amounts of alcohol consumed.
Country level
individualistic cultures drink more beer (Zhang and Shrum, 2009), autonomy and harmony (+) vs. embeddedness and hierarchy (-) drink more alcohol (Inman et al., 2017), but no significant relations in Europe (Mackenbach, 2014; Inman et al., 2017).
Materials
Data from: European Social Survey, round 7. 37,121 respondents in 21 countries.
Frequncy of drinking: “In the last 12 months… how often have you had a drink containing alcohol?”: “Every day” (1) to “Never” (7).
Values: “Here we briefly describe some people.. how much each person is or is not like you”: “Not at all like me” (1) to “Very much like me” (6). (Schwartz et al., 2001).Results - Multilevel regression
| Individual level | |
| Openness to Change (vs. Conservation) | 0.10*** (0.005) |
| Self-Transcendence (vs. Self-Enhancement) | 0.001 (0.005) |
| Female | -0.45*** (0.04) |
| Age (std.) | 0.20*** (0.02) |
| Age (std.) x Female | -0.09*** (0.01) |
| Years of education (std.) | 0.13*** (0.01) |
| Living with partner | 0.16*** (0.01) |
| Good mood scale | 0.03** (0.01) |
| Frequency of social encounters (std.) | 0.06*** (0.01) |
| Overall religiosity | -0.08*** (0.01) |
Country level |
|
| Openness to Change (vs. Conservation) (std.) | -0.05 (0.04) |
| Self-Transcendence (vs. Self-Enhancement) (std.) | 0.07 (0.04) |
Cross-level interactions |
|
| individual Openness to Change (vs. Conservation) | |
| x country Openness to Change (vs. Conservation) | -0.01 (0.01)† |
| x country Self-Transcendence (vs. Self-Enhancement) | -0.0004 (0.01) |
| individual Self-Transcendence (vs. Self-Enhancement) | |
| x country Self-Transcendence (vs. Self-Enhancement) | -0.01* (0.01) |
| x country Openness to Change (vs. Conservation) | -0.03*** (0.01) |
Dependent variable - frequency of drinking.
Interactions between culture-level and individual-level values
Why? It’s counter-intuitive!
- Cultural rewards for abstatinig in tight cultures vs. lack of normative pressure in loose ones.
- Self-Affirmation: when people feel lonely in their values, drinking might help reconnect to their values.
- Differences in instantiations (Hanel et al., 2017): expressions of Self-Transcendence values:
- (in cultures high on Openness): helping, caring about nature
- (in cultures high on Consevration): sociability, that leads to drinking.
