COVID-19 Fears Trigger Reasons to Drink: Experimental Priming of Pandemic Phobias Causes State Anxiety and State Alcohol Motivations

COVID-19 fears and anxieties have been identified as risks for alcohol tendencies in previous correlational investigations, but the literature has largely neglected scrutinizing these connections using randomized experiments. In this cue-reactivity experiment, questionnaire priming methodology was applied to trigger anxiety and consequently activate drinking motives in adult participants ( N = 423). Participants were randomly assigned to the COVID-19 fear priming group or the control group. In the priming group, fear was induced by exposing participants to threatening item stimuli concerning COVID-19 phobias. MANCOVA and ANCOVAs controlling for drinker status were conducted. The COVID-19 fear priming group compared to the control group endorsed significantly higher scores on state assessments of anxiety and coping, conformity, and social drinking motives, but no difference was exhibited on enhancement drinking motives. Furthermore, structural equation modeling showed that state anxiety mediated the causal effects of the COVID-19 fear priming manipulation on each of the four state drinking motives, as supported by tests of indirect effects. After controlling for state anxiety, the fear priming manipulation directly predicted state social drinking motives, but not coping, enhancement, and conformity drinking motives in this model. Additionally, tests of moderated mediation with drinker status as the moderator of the mediational processes were evaluated. The findings indicate that COVID-19 fears in triggering anxiety reactions are subsequently managed through drinking motives in the effort to alleviate the anxiety.