Controlled Motivation In College Students

A serious social problem has emerged in the wake of alcohol consumption among college

students. Individuals going away to college know they are taking on huge responsibilities to care

for themselves, get to class, do their homework, and so forth. They also know they will not have

the adult supervision that prevents them from consuming alcohol. In a three year span at Monmouth University there was a total of 504 alcohol violations, a number derived from the combination of arrests and campus disciplinary action records (www.monmouth.edu/mupd).

This number is a gross misrepresentation of the prevalence of alcohol consumption in

universities since many students get away with it. The real problem, however, lies within the relationship between

“Controlled motivation” is a concept

derived from self–determination theory, one of the theoretical frameworks of this study.

“Controlled motivation” is defined as feeling pressure to engage in certain activities, not because the individual necessarily wants to or finds the activities interesting, but because of external

factors like rewards or punishments, avoiding shame, conformity, or seeking approval. In other words, and in terms of this specific study, “controlled motivations” will be (D1) peer pressure, (D2) stress, and (D3) neither peer pressured or stressed, therefore voluntary, which make up the

three dimensions of this conditional variable. To be clear, the rationale for the hypothesis of this relationship is that when an individual consumes alcohol out of peer pressure or stress, and not because of one’s own volition, that individual will be more prone to undesired consequences, of

perpetrating aggression.

The final variable, the effects of intoxication, is an intervening variable, or a variable that

can explain why the relationship between an independent and dependent variable exists. The construct delimitation of this intervening variable is the physiological state produced by a

With the continuing increase in alcohol consumption on college campus, more studies have been devoted to examining the relationship between alcohol and aggression among college

students. Experimental research has indicated that alcohol does in fact facilitate aggressive behavior, due to its neurological effects on the frontal lobe, which include impairing reason,

impairing motor skills, and physical side effects (Dekker 1999). The research study proving these same results used a control group and an antiplacebo group to gauge the pure biological

effects of alcohol consumption. While the control group was told they would not - and did not – receive an alcohol beverage, the antiplacebo group was split into two subgroups: one group was

told they would receive an alcoholic beverage, the other group would not. However, within those two subgroups, some participants were given an alcoholic beverage while others were not,

regardless of the initial instructions they received. By doing this, the researchers were able to control for the expectation of intoxication, which allowed for a “pure pharmacological effect