Family Communicative Environment’s Effects on Young Adults’ Social Norms about Limiting Alcohol: Examining the Mediating Effects of Implicit Privacy Rules

Abstract

ABSTRACT Alcohol usage among young adults remains a prominent public health concern. Communicating with family members about alcohol can positively influence young adults’ perceptions of social norms, yet the stigmatized nature of alcohol-related conversations in the family create a barrier to occurrence of these conversations. This study examines how young adults’ familial communication patterns relate to their descriptive and injunctive social norms about limiting alcohol, using Communication Privacy Management Theory as the theoretical framework. Specifically, this study seeks to understand how conversation orientation, conformity orientation, warm conformity orientation, and cold conformity orientation associates with two sets of social norms (descriptive and injunctive), and to investigate how implicit privacy rules mediates each of these relationships. The current study examines 444 college students’ responses to several quantitative measures. Implicit privacy rules did fully mediate the relationships between conversation orientation and injunctive social norms about limiting alcohol as well as warm conformity orientation and injunctive social norms about limiting alcohol.