Social psychology of alcohol involvement, marital dissolution, and marital interaction processes across multiple timescales

This chapter reviews research on the association between alcohol involvement and marital dissolution. It describes an emerging theoretical framework for research on substance use and marriage based on social psychology, relationship science, and developmental science that (1) includes both spouses and focuses on the dyad as the unit of analysis to explicitly test for husband and wife differences and dyadic patterns of alcohol involvement and (2) assesses core constructs across multiple timescales, with a focus on daily processes as potential linkages between real-time marital interactions and outcomes that unfold over longer timescales. This framework can strengthen connections between social psychological and developmental theory, inform basic research on alcohol and social interaction processes, and potentially enhance prevention and treatment efforts by identifying the mechanisms underlying the associations between alcohol involvement and negative marital outcomes.