Drinking Motives, Alcohol Misuse, and Internalizing and Externalizing Psychopathology across College: A Cross-Lagged Panel Study

<i>Background:</i> Drinking motives are strong proximal predictors of alcohol use behaviors and may represent a mediational mechanism by which different individual predispositions toward internalizing or externalizing psychopathology lead to the development of alcohol misuse. However, whether the association is due to a causal relationship or a shared etiology (i.e., confounding) is difficult to determine and may change across developmental periods. <i>Methods:</i> This study leveraged a cross-lagged panel design to disentangle the nature of the relationships between self-report measures of drinking motives, alcohol misuse, and internalizing and externalizing psychopathology in a 4-year longitudinal sample of college students (<i>N</i> = 9,889). <i>Results:</i> Results pointed to a putative causal effect of drinking motives on early binge drinking frequency, but the direction of effect later reversed, reflecting a possible developmental shift during college. On the other hand, the relationships between drinking motives and internalizing/externalizing psychopathology appeared to be driven by shared etiology rather than direct causal mechanisms. <i>Conclusions:</i> These findings highlight the distinct and important role of drinking motives in the etiology of alcohol misuse and have implications for the application of tailored prevention and treatment strategies.