Drinking buddies undo PSAs.

• Position: College Life

College students' drinking behaviors are influenced more by their perceptions of their friends' drinking than by social norms marketing campaigns that encourage students to "go along with the crowd," according to a University of Iowa, Ames, researcher.

Public service announcements typically use statistics or facts to counter students' misperceptions about how much their fellow students drink--posters or ads stressing that most students are moderate drinkers or nondrinkers, for example. While they have become popular on college campuses over the past decade, these ads are problematic, argues Shelly Campo, assistant professor of community and behavioral health.

"These ... are based on the assumption that students don't really know what the correct norm is, that they are likely to underestimate how many people are really drinking responsibly, and that a 'correct' message will change their behavior. These [initiatives] also assume that students want to be like the typical college student, which is difficult to define, particularly at a college or university with a large or diverse student population."

Campo contends that colleges and universities that claim great success in reducing problem drinking among students commonly implement additional methods, such as peer-to-peer education sessions, expanded counseling services, and parental notification policies. Campo also reviewed other studies that failed to demonstrate support for social norms campaigns or showed such initiatives correcting students' misperceptions but not actually altering their actions.

"Clearly, norms can have an effect on behavior, but my thinking was that changing students' behavior...