Abstract
Social anxiety is often purported to be a risk factor for increased cannabis use. Cannabis use motives are strong explanatory predictors of cannabis use embedded within social contexts. This investigation explored the impact of social anxiety, cannabis motives, and their interaction on willingness to use cannabis in a community sample of emerging adults. Social anxiety was anticipated to positively correlate with coping and conformity motives and greater willingness to use cannabis in peer social contexts. Motives to use were hypothesized to potentiate social anxiety’s influence on cannabis use decision-making. In total, 124 participants completed an audio simulation of social cannabis use contexts (Can-SIDE) and standard measures of social anxiety (SIAS) and use motives (MMM). Contrary to expectations, social anxiety exerted a protective effect on willingness to use cannabis, but only when conformity, social, and expansion motives were at or below average. These effects varied by social contexts of use. Social anxiety leading to increased cannabis use may be most apparent in clinical samples and in high-risk cannabis users, but this pattern was not supported in this sample of community living emerging adults below clinical cutoffs for cannabis use disorder with relatively high social anxiety.
Highlights
Cannabis use and cannabis-related consequences increase among emerging adults (18–25 year olds) compared to adolescents, and epidemiological data shows daily cannabis use among emerging adults is at the highest rate since the 1980s [1]
As less attention has been given to social, enhancement, and expansion motives in such models, we explored whether these motives function as a moderator of social anxiety’s influence on cannabis willingness
A subset of the sample reported a diagnosis of social anxiety disorder
Summary
Cannabis use and cannabis-related consequences increase among emerging adults (18–25 year olds) compared to adolescents, and epidemiological data shows daily cannabis use among emerging adults is at the highest rate since the 1980s [1]. U.S National Comorbidity Survey, cannabis users with social anxiety were seven times more likely to experience serious cannabis-related impairment as compared to those who used cannabis without a concurrent social anxiety disorder [3]. Some evidence suggests that rather than being a risk factor, social anxiety may serve as a protective factor against problematic substance use [6,7]. This suggests there may be important moderators that could help clarify the association between social anxiety and cannabis use, providing an understanding of the mechanisms by which social anxiety may predispose individuals to cannabis use and associated problems
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