Social Environmental Selection as a Mediator of Gender, Ethnic, and Personality Effects on College Student Drinking Christopher W. Kahler and Jennifer P. Read Brown University Mark D. Wood University of Rhode Island Tibor P. Palfai Boston University Structural equation modeling was used to test the mediational role of social environmental selection on alcohol use in cross-sectional samples of 447 students from a rural state university and 421 students from an urban private university. Results showed that male gender, White ethnicity, and sensation seeking were uniquely associated with greater alcohol use. Mediational analyses indicated that socioenviron- mental factors (i.e., Greek involvement, friends’ approval of drinking/getting drunk) were positively associated with alcohol use and significantly accounted for parts of the effects of ethnicity and sensation seeking, but not gender, on alcohol use. Results suggest that White students and those high on sensation seeking may drink more heavily in college, in part because they select social environments in which alcohol use is encouraged. Alcohol misuse is prevalent among college students, with over 40% engaging in heavy episodic drinking (Wechsler, Dowdall, Maenner, Gledhill-Hoyt, & Lee, 1998; Wechsler, Lee, Kuo, & Lee, 2000). A substantial body of literature has established the importance of the social environment in determining drinking behavior among college students (e.g., Borsari & Carey, 2001; Carey, 1993; Collins, Parks, & Marlatt, 1985; Perkins, Meilman, Leichliter, Cashin, & Presley, 1999; Wood, Read, Palfai, & Stevenson, 2001). Although social influences typically have been conceptualized as directly shaping drinking behaviors in college, it is likely that individuals are not passive recipients of environmen- tal influences and that the association between environment and drinking behavior is reciprocal rather than unidirectional; that is, individuals are affected by social environments, but they also select the environments to which they are exposed. Selection of social environments that are conducive to drinking may play an important role in alcohol use and problems (Britt & Campbell, 1977; Wood, Maddock, Hallak, Mitchell, & Stevenson, 2000) and may account, in part, for the effects on alcohol use of certain demographic and personality characteristics that may influence social selection. The extent to which social selection acts as a proximal mediator of the effects of more distal individual demo- graphic and personality characteristics has yet to be examined in college students. The Environmental Selection Perspective Evidence from both the genetic and the social psychological literature suggests that individuals may present to a social envi- ronment with specific (possibly heritable) individual risk factors, which may interact with the environment to result in increased alcohol consumption (e.g., Fitzgerald & Zucker, 1995; Legrand, McGue, & Iacono, 1999; Maisto, Carey, & Bradizza, 1999; Searles, 1988). Within this interactive framework, an environmen- tal selection perspective suggests that dispositional or static char- acteristics may influence behaviors directly and indirectly by af- fecting the types of environments to which one “chooses” to be exposed (Robins, Elliott, & Pattison, 2001; Searles, 1988). Recent work in the area of social network models of behavior points to evidence that social networks are, in fact, chosen as a result of the particular sociodemographic, personality, or other types of char- acteristics of the individual who selects them (Robins et al., 2001). As a result, these selected environments may support and enhance predispositions to certain behavioral outcomes. The nature of the relationship between the individual and his or her social environment may be particularly relevant to the phe- nomenon of college drinking, as the college years are typically a time of increased alcohol consumption as well as increased social interaction. On enrollment in college, students are presented with a relatively unique opportunity to select from a wide range of friends and social activities. The degree to which these selected social environments are supportive of heavy drinking may have a major impact on future alcohol use. Previous studies have exam- Christopher W. Kahler and Jennifer P. Read, Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, Brown University; Mark D. Wood, Department of Psychology and Cancer Prevention Research Center, University of Rhode Island; Tibor P. Palfai, Department of Psychology, Boston University. This study was supported in part by a grant from the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation and Grant R29 AA12241 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to Mark D. Wood. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christo- pher W. Kahler, Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, Brown Uni- versity, Box G-BH, Providence, Rhode Island 02912. E-mail: Christopher_Kahler@brown.edu Psychology of Addictive Behaviors Copyright 2003 by the Educational Publishing Foundation 2003, Vol. 17, No. 3, 226 –234 0893-164X/03/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0893-164X.17.3.226 226