Thesis Christ: Planning Alcohol Behaviors with Gavin Leonard

Why do we drink? Not only is this the musing of many a 4:00am existential crisis to the soundtrack of Leonard Cohen, but also the subject of Gavin Leonard’s psychology thesis. In his research, Leonard investigates the extent to which our intentions can be revealed through linguistic patterns in social interactions. Specifically, Leonard is interested in analyzing the use of language in social situations involving alcohol. 

Leonard’s thesis revolves around investigating the applications of the theory of planned behavior. Originally developed by social psychologist Icek Ajzen, the theory posits that intention is the greatest predictor of behavior. According to the theory, these intentions hinge around three major predictors: attitudes, subjective social norms, and perceived behavioral control. 

Despite the prevalence of the theory of planned behavior and its numerous applications within clinical psychology, Leonard noted that, until this point, it has only been studied in one specific format. Previous studies have investigated participants’ behaviors in the form of direct questions on their actions and beliefs. Although additional information has been taken into consideration over the years, such as the impact of subjects’ identity, the general format of questioning has gone largely unchanged.

Leonard’s thesis seeks to expand the implementation of the theory of planned behavior by conducting linguistic analysis on a less rigidly-structured data set. “What I am doing basically is looking at if we can glean these same effects on intention through open-ended linguistic elicitations,” explained Leonard.

The data at the center of Leonard’s thesis was the subject of his work this past summer with his thesis advisor, Professor of Psychology Kris Anderson. The data consists of a series of transcripts of interviews with participants aged between 18 and 25, who were asked to respond to different hypothetical alcohol-related scenarios. 

Where other studies used direct questions that prompted subjects to consciously consider their responses, Leonard seeks to use psycholinguistics, which he says provides a way to investigate “the subconscious workings of our minds through what we say in everyday interactions.” This avenue was decided upon in conjunction with Anderson to develop a new way to apply the theory of planned behavior. Leonard emphasized the unique nature of his research in comparison to previous applications, saying, “[I]t feels nice, at least at Reed, to be like, ‘I know the absolute most about what I’m doing right now.’ It feels very gratifying.”

This data, collected by Anderson’s Adolescent Health Research Program, is notable for the diversity of genders and sexualities represented, which has important implications for expanding future research on alcohol use among gender minorities. “This sample is really interesting because it has a big, big oversampling of those gender diverse, sexual orientation diverse participants, which opens a big window for trans research on alcohol,” said Leonard.

Linking the theory to the data, Leonard is determining connections between specific linguistic factors and the different elements of the theory of planned behavior. For instance, attitudes are linked to negative or positive tones, while qualities like politeness and pro-social behavior are related to social norms. In particular, Leonard noted that analyzing perceived behavioral control presented some difficulties, as a largely untrodden area of study in the existing literature, although he ultimately decided on his approach for this linguistic category by “looking at measures of self-efficacy and controllability.”

While Leonard considered choosing another direction for his thesis, he ultimately decided to continue his work with Anderson. “I wanted to stick with what I knew and dive even deeper into what I was interested in,” said Leonard, citing his interest and future aspirations in the field of clinical psychology. He aims to continue his work after graduation, explaining, “I think it has a lot of implications for where I can take this in the future because I would love to keep working on this in my future doing research.”

At the moment, Leonard is beginning the process of data analysis. While it’s too soon to draw any definitive conclusions, he hopes to gain statistically significant results. “This has the potential to be publishable, which is really exciting for me, but it’s also really scary,” remarked Leonard. “I want to be able to find something and provide something new to the field that hasn’t really been explored yet.”