Differences in behavior change of daily reminders on drinking frequency
We conducted follow-up analyses to explore whether the within-person effects of the psychological distance intervention reminders, observed in both studies, i.e. the decrease in the drinking occasion frequency from inactive to active weeks, differed from non-intervention related changes in the absence of distancing reminders. Specifically, we compared whether changes in drinking frequency in the intervention conditions differed from changes in drinking frequency in the control condition across both samples. As part of the study protocol, the control condition received control reminders throughout the entire study period, which prompted participants to respond to alcohol naturally. Thus, we were interested in whether the observed change in drinking frequency differed from change we may expect for participants self-monitoring their own alcohol use and completing other aspects of the protocol, but without the key psychological distancing components. To test for this possibility, we randomly labeled two of the four weeks as pseudo “active” and pseudo “inactive” in the control condition, despite the protocol remaining the same throughout. This random assignment allowed us to match the control and intervention protocol as closely as possible. We repeated this randomization 100 times and compared the average pseudo-inactive-to-active-week change scores for the control group to the change scores for the intervention groups. Performing this comparison allowed us to test whether the changes in drinking frequency among participants in the intervention conditions differed from changes among participants who participated in all other aspects of the study but were not instructed to adopt psychological distance. See Follow-up behavior change analyses section of the Methods for details.