Rather than suggesting that problematic alcohol use is the result of psychological or psychobiological risk factors, the deviance proneness model (Sher et al., 1999) posits that substance use represents a facet of a broad pattern of deviant behaviors that are thought to begin in childhood as a result of deficient socialization and genetic vulnerability. These deficits are not specific to substance use but also are associated with a number of other problematic outcomes, including association with deviant peers, childhood achievement problems, and delinquent behaviors. For example, Cooper, Wood, Orcutt, and Albino (2003) demonstrated that the relations among educational underachievement, delinquent behavior, substance use, and sexual behavior could be adequately modeled as a single higher order factor and that avoidance coping and impulsivity were risk factors for engaging in these behaviors. Factor analytic models also suggest that alcohol dependence, reverse-scored constraint (a construct related to impulsivity), drug dependence, conduct disorder, and antisocial behavior appear to be well represented by an “externalizing” factor (i.e., latent variable), providing evidence that both personality and substance use should be viewed along the same externalizing continuum
