Mai-Ly Nguyen Steers

• Ph.D. Social Psychology
• Professor (Assistant) at Duquesne University

Recent literature has provided evidence that online behaviors may be a manifestation of off-line cognitions; furthermore online self-presentations may shape off-line outcomes. The present study examined the associations between the individual difference variable of authenticity (measured via relationship and dispositional authenticity), relationshi...

Two studies investigated how social comparison to peers through computer-mediated interactions on Facebook might impact users' psychological health. Study 1 (N = 180) revealed an association between time spent on Facebook and depressive symptoms for both genders. However, results demonstrated that making Facebook social comparisons mediated the lin...

Objective: Personalized normative feedback (PNF) has been used extensively to reduce alcohol consumption, particularly among heavy drinkers. However, the majority of PNF studies have used only descriptive norms (real or perceived pervasiveness of a given behavior). The purpose of the current study was to explore the efficacy of PNF both with and w...

Background Social media has become a primary way for college students to communicate aspects of their daily lives to those within their social network. Such communications often include substance use displays (e.g., selfies of college students drinking). Furthermore, students’ substance use displays have been found to robustly predict not only the...

Background: Social influences from peers, such as the perceptions of how much one's peers drink (i.e., descriptive drinking norms) are robust predictors of college drinking. In the digital age, these influences can happen on social media through viewing posts shared by peers depicting drinking (alcohol-related content). Social media influencers als...

Background Setting rules about alcohol use and minimizing its availability in the home are known effective parent‐level strategies for reducing underage drinking risk. However, parents' restrictions and their perceptions of their child's alcohol access have rarely been considered in combination (e.g., determining if rule‐setting consistently accomp...

Introduction The COVID‐19 pandemic impacted young people's drinking. Yet, despite social gatherings posing a known risk for increased contraction, some college students still congregated to drink. Furthermore, some students posted about these drinking events to their public and/or private social media feeds. It is crucial to understand the relation...

The onset of the pandemic saw shifts in messaging around the acceptability of alcohol consumption at different times and contexts. A psychometric analysis of responses to injunctive norms may reveal important differences in specific aspects of norms that were influenced by the pandemic. Study 1 used alignment analysis to evaluate measurement invari...

There have been numerous investigations of aberrant eating and substance abuse among patients who have undergone bariatric surgery, which affects the metabolism and the pharmacokinetics of alcohol. However, there is a dearth of literature considering the complex interplay between changes in post‐surgery food and alcohol consumption. Furthermore, de...

Introduction: Alcohol-related content (ARC) on social media and drinking motives impact college students' drinking. Most studies have examined peer-generated ARC on drinking outcomes but have yet to extend this relationship to other sources of influence. The current study explores the link between drinking motives, alcohol company ARC, celebrity A...

Background Drinking is a public health concern among college students. Viewing and posting alcohol‐related content (ARC) on social media may influence students' favorable prototypes of people who post, thereby impacting their drinking. This study created a measure to explore students' ARC poster prototypes. We validated our measure by examining the...

Social media posts may elicit strong, instantaneous feelings of irritation, or “annoyance.” The current experiment investigated how participants’ ratings of Facebook posts and their levels of closeness to the poster impacted these feelings. Respondents (N = 476) were asked to rate how irrelevant, inappropriate, mundane, and annoying Facebook posts...

Social networking sites (SNSs) are popular among college-aged adults. The defining characteristic of SNSs is that they are a platform to electronically share content. Most students report posting alcohol-related content (ARC) on SNSs. Little is known concerning these students who consume both alcohol and ARC yet choose not to generate ARC. Objecti...

Introduction: Posting and viewing of alcohol-related content to social media is prevalent among college students and is related to problematic drinking. However, the cognitive self-presentation and self-monitoring processes behind users' alcohol-related content posts to different platforms are largely unknown. Methods: Through in-depth, qualitat...

Background Despite the growing prevalence of cannabis use and associated consequences among U.S. young adults, relatively little is known about precisely what level of marijuana involvement may be problematic. Method To address this gap, with this study we sought to identify empirically-derived cut-scores for the Marijuana Consequences Questionnai...

Purpose: Drinking is common among young adult veterans. Previous research has established that veterans' drinking is more strongly associated with veteran versus civilian drinking norms. The present research extends these findings by examining the influence of self-identification both with other veterans and with civilians as moderators of the ass...

Despite a large body of work exploring associations between perceived norms and drinking and norms-based interventions for drinking, less work has examined moderators of associations between norms and drinking outcomes to determine potential sub-groups that might benefit most from brief norms-based interventions. The present study investigates shyn...

A robust finding is the positive association between self-generated alcohol-related content (SG-ARC) on social media (SM) and drinking among emerging adults; however, the reasons for this relationship are still unclear. A factor that has yet to be explored in combination with SG-ARC is how viewing others' alcohol-related content (ARC) may be impact...

This article discusses ethical concerns surrounding social media content posted by nurses; specifically, how these posts may violate public trust. It also summarizes considerations for nurses to contemplate before posting to social media and provides examples of positive uses of social media.

Substantial research has found a robust relationship between stressful life events and increased negative health outcomes and a greater predisposition to various forms of substance use; however, less is known about the individual factors that explain this relationship. The present study examines the moderating factors of gambling to cope and indivi...

There is considerable research demonstrating that college life alcohol salience is associated with alcohol use among undergraduates. However, the strength of this association may depend on whether students self-identify with other students on their campus; self-identification with other students may indicate how influential other students are on an...

Background Literature has consistently shown a positive relationship between young adults’ social media alcohol-related posts and drinking outcomes; however, the reasons for this association and the psychosocial influences behind students’ posting of alcohol-related content are still unclear. Peer influences have been robustly shown to predict stud...

Discrimination is a pervasive stressor among African-American adults. Social support is an important protective factor for psychological distress, especially among minority populations. Although a number of studies have examined social support in relation to discrimination, little research has examined how social support may serve as an important p...

Deviance Regulation Theory (DRT) proposes that individuals regulate their behavior to be in line with the behaviors of others. Specifically, individuals desire to stand out in positive way and not stand out in a negative way. DRT has been successfully applied to encourage other health behaviors and offers a unique method to utilize both injunctive...

Religiousness has been a consistent protective factor against problem drinking. Religiousness is also positively related to some domains of mental health (Koenig, 2009). We propose that Vallerand and Houlfort's (2003) theory of passion, which includes two different approaches to any given activity, might offer a more nuanced understanding of the re...

Although social networking sites such as Facebook have been touted as creating a global village, there may be a downside to such computer-mediated interactions on users’ well-being. One such consequence is that stimuli via computer-mediated interactions may be anxiety-provoking for some users. As such, recent studies have tried to ascertain persona...

Introduction: Individuals rate opposite sex faces as more attractive after consuming or being primed with alcohol. However, other traits such as intelligence and likeability have not been examined and might vary as a function of information about one's drinking habits. We expected social drinkers to be rated more positively than heavy drinkers, ab...

Objective: Although the concepts of harmonious and obsessive passion have been productive in explaining why people eagerly engage in such activities as sports, Internet use, and gambling, previous research has not yet extended these models to explain alcohol and marijuana use among college students. The current research was conducted to clarify th...

The detrimental effect of ambivalence over emotional expression (AEE) on social support has been well-documented. However, the underlying mechanism of this effect remains unclear. Research has demonstrated that when general needs are not met, negative psychological outcomes occur. Thus, the current study investigated general needs satisfaction (GNS...

The current study investigated whether religious coping would moderate the association between ambivalence over emotional expression (AEE) and depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms such that the positive relationship between AEE and depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms would be weaker among those higher in religious coping. Three-hundred and...

The first experimental study of relationship talk (N = 42 couples) showed that when couples read stories about spouses who talked to each other about their relationships, such talk had different outcomes for the spouses, depending on the context and which partner was speaking. We replicated and improved upon this study in a number of ways (e.g. sam...

This study evaluated pet affinity as a buffer between ambivalence over emotional expression (AEE) and social support. AEE occurs when one desires to express emotions but is reluctant to do so and is related to negative psychological outcomes. Individuals high in AEE may have difficulty receiving social support and thus may not gain accompanying ben...

This study evaluates associations between coping drinking motives (CDM; drinking to regulate negative affect), depressive symptoms, and drinking behavior and extends the literature by also taking into account gender differences. Two hundred forty-three college students (Mean age = 22.93, SD = 6.29, 82 % female) participated. Based on previous resea...

Parental conditional regard is a parenting practice which may lead to negative outcomes for the child. Yet, no research has examined whether feelings of love worthiness may be dependent upon conditional parental regard. Furthermore, certain conditions within the family environment may exacerbate this effect. Across two studies, undergraduate studen...

This study evaluated benefit finding as a moderator of the relationship between spiritual and religious attitudes and drinking. Previous research indicates that undergraduates who drink heavily experience negative alcohol-related consequences. Literature also suggests that spirituality and religiosity (S/R) are protective against heavy drinking (e....