Drinking to regulate negative romantic relationship interactions: The moderating role of self-esteem q Tracy DeHart a, * , Howard Tennen b , Stephen Armeli c , Michael Todd d , Glenn Affleck b a Department of Psychology, Loyola University of Chicago, 6525 North Sheridan Road, Chicago, IL 60626, USA b Department of Community Medicine, University of Connecicut Health Center, MC 6325, Farmington, CT 06030-6325, USA c Department of Psychology, Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1000 River Road,Teaneck, NJ 07666, USA d Prevention Research Center, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, 1995 University Avenue, Suite 450, Berkeley, CA, USA Received 2 August 2006; revised 28 September 2007 Available online 5 October 2007 Abstract A 30-day diary study examined the relations among trait self-esteem, negative romantic relationship interactions, and alcohol con- sumption. Multilevel analyses revealed that people with low trait self-esteem (compared with people with high trait self-esteem) drank more on days when they experienced more negative relationship interactions with their romantic partners. In addition, daily increases in state self-esteem buffered people with low trait self-esteem from the desire to drink in response to negative romantic relationship inter- actions. In contrast, participants with high and low self-esteem both decreased their drinking in response to negative non-romantic rela- tionship events, but people with low self-esteem decreased their drinking less. These findings suggest that people with low trait self-esteem may drink as a way to regulate unfulfilled needs for acceptance. Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Self-esteem; Close relationships; Feelings of acceptance; Alcohol consumption It is a widely held assumption that low self-esteem is associated with alcohol consumption. However, the avail- able evidence linking self-esteem to drinking is equivocal at best (for a review see Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003; Cournoyer & Malcolm, 2004; Wills, 1994). On the one hand, low self-esteem and an anxious-ambiva- lent attachment style (i.e., negative model of self) have been associated with increased alcohol use (Brennan & Shaver, 1995; Cooper, Shaver, & Collins, 1998; McNally, Palfai, Levine, & Moore, 2002). On the other hand, high self- esteem has also been linked with increased substance use (Gerrard, Gibbons, Reis-Bergan, & Russell, 2000; Sharp & Getz, 1996). Most of these studies have assessed the rela- tion between self-esteem and drinking using between-per- son cross-sectional designs. That is, this research has not been able to examine within-person contingencies such as whether people with low self-esteem drink more in certain situations, such as in response to negative interactions with their romantic relationship partners. In the present study we used a daily process design to examine the within-person contingencies among self- esteem, negative romantic relationship interactions, and daily alcohol consumption. Previous research has found that people who feel less positively regarded by their part- ners (i.e. low self-esteem) are not able to compensate for self-doubt by activating thoughts of their partner’s accep- tance (Murray, Griffin, Rose, & Bellavia, 2003a). Because people with low self-esteem do not use their partners as a self-regulatory resource during times of conflict with their partners, they may drink as a way to regulate themselves in response to such events. In contrast, because people with high self-esteem use their partners as a self-regulatory 0022-1031/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2007.10.001 q This research was supported by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Grants T-32 AA7290 and P50-AA03510. We would like to thank Sandra Murray and the members of the 2003–2004 Alcohol Research Center Postdoctoral seminar for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this article. * Corresponding author. E-mail address: tdehart@luc.edu (T. DeHart). www.elsevier.com/locate/jesp Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44 (2008) 527–538