Happy Hour and Social Lubrication: Evidence on Mood-Setting Rituals of Drinking Time

Abstract

This study employs a combination of questionnaire and diary data to examine positive emotional changes that a sample of 328 students experienced during routine episodes of social drinking. Quasi-experimental comparisons of participants versus nonparticipants in weekday or weekend evening drinking events reveal two basic patterns of change in drinkers' ratings of situational affect. Participants in weekday drinking events — in contrast to weekend drinkers — show a transitional pattern of reduction in stress from a predrinking baseline period to the subsequent period when they began to drink. Increases in sociable affect emerge within the context of both weekday and weekend drinking events, but this contextual pattern of mood enhancement is especially prominent at certain times among drinkers who score relatively high on a dispositional measure of sociability. These results support theoretical analyses of the cultural regulation and mood-setting functions of social drinking rituals.