The ability of alcohol to facilitate social interactions plays a key role in adolescent drinking behaviors (Beck et al., 1993; Beck and Treiman, 1996; Smith et al., 1995). Additionally, one of the most important factors implicated in alcohol use in high school students is its’ effects on social facilitation (Beck & Treiman, 1996; Thombs et al., 1994). Passive social influences have been shown to affect future alcohol use in adolescent humans (Graham et al., 1991) and the results obtained from the present experiments and previous preclinical work (Fernandez-Vidal & Molina, 2004; Hunt et al., 2001) confirms this notion. More work should be conducted to identify the specific mechanisms that may mediate these results and how they may alter adolescent alcohol-seeking behavior.
