It appears that among youth, gender differences regarding the overall impact of perceptions about drinking on quantity of alcohol consumption may be negligible. Interestingly, positive expectancies are more similar between genders than negative expectancies, a pattern not mirrored in adults. Furthermore, these negative beliefs about alcohol use differentially impacted drinking frequency for boys and girls. Given that frequency of alcohol consumption is dictated more by availability than cognitions in underage drinkers (Brown et al., 2008), alcohol expectancies serve a similar role in early drinking decisions for both sexes. It is clear that beliefs and expectations regarding alcohol use and cessation are not stagnant. Instead, they are shaped from childhood through adulthood by myriad factors that while dynamic, do not appear to differentially impact males and females in early adolescence. In fact, research examining expectancies, personality, and neuroanatomy suggests that extraversion is associated with greater positive expectancies for drinking in early adolescence (Anderson, Schweinsburg, Paulus, Brown, & Tapert, 2005) while disinhibition yields a stronger relationship with positive alcohol expectancies in college samples (Anderson, Smith, & Fischer, 2003; McCarthy, Kroll, & Smith, 2001). Thus, beliefs about the positive and negative consequences of drinking are shaped and altered by brain and social development.
