sensation seeking, and alcohol use, whereby sensation seeking and alcohol use are indicators of a common underlying factor (e.g., externalizing, Krueger et al., 2002) that is influenced by genetic factors (e.g., alc-GPS). Future research is warranted to test these alternative models to better characterize the relations between sensation seeking, alcohol use, and their underlying genetic etiology. Fourth, we examined a conceptual model that considers rGE, with social support serving as an indirect pathway between genetic influences and alcohol use. However, we acknowledge there can be other alternative explanations for the association between genetic risk, social support, and alcohol use, such as epiphenomenon. Finally, COGA is a high-risk sample with participants from extended families enriched for AUD and findings from this study may not be generalizable to other samples with different recruitment strategies (Savage et al., 2018). Future research is needed to replicate our findings in community and population-based samples.
