Kristen G. Anderson, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology will give a talk entitled “Peer social contexts: Gender and decisions to use alcohol in adolescence and emerging adulthood”.  

Friday, March 8th, at 11 a.m. Room Miquel Siguan (Grados) 

Anderson works at the Adolescent Health Research Program Reed College, Portland, Oregon USA 

Peers are strong influences on alcohol and other drug (AOD) decision-making for youth. Dr. Anderson’s work examines how social context impacts adolescent and emerging adult decisions to use and abstain, addressing the proximal influence of peers in AOD use contexts. In this talk, she will share her work on the Simulated Intoxication Digital Elicitation (SIDE) paradigm, a video- and audio-based simulation strategy, affording the opportunity to investigate in-the- moment decision-making using a uniform set of peer use contexts (alcohol, tobacco, & cannabis) for use in basic research. Dr. Anderson's most recent project examines how an individual's gender identity (cisgender, transgender, nonbinary) and the perceived gender of peers in drinking contexts affects decisions to use alcohol. A growing body of research is considering identity outside the traditional binary of sex assigned at birth. How gender dynamics play out socially when drinking may have implications for health-related disparities in alcohol-related consequences. This talk is appropriate for researchers, practitioners, trainees, and students with interests in AOD decision-making.