Binge Thinking

Peer Reviewed Research

Binge Thinking applies peer-reviewed research toward decreasing students’ alcohol  use by curbing their motives and enhancing their protective behavioral strategies. Through interaction, and games encouraging reflection, Binge Thinking challenges students to introspectively interrogate the ways their emotional responses to facts about consumption impair their ability to enact positive decisions.

Learning Objectives

• Explore the emotional, social and academic pressures to abuse alcohol
• Review the effects of alcohol use and abuse, including its impact on cognition, academic success, personal relationships, as well as vulnerability to violence
• Cultivate internal motivation and a critical lens to counter the more reactionary, emotional responses students may feel to perceived social pressures to abuse alcohol
• Provide tactics to engage themselves and their peers in a healthy relationship and understanding of alcohol

Critical Thinking, Not Shaming

Binge Thinking’s format is designed to foster multiple opportunities for students to engage in critical thinking exercises without shame. It features various interactive “games” and a multi-path format. Depending on how students answer the questions posed throughout, responses will be tailored to how they identify their motivation to consume alcohol. The program also strategically incorporates humor and scenarios to make messages more relatable and less dogmatic. Like Catharsis Productions’ other online trainings, this interactive program feels like a conversation. The structure and approach of is driven by research into motivated reasoning and critical thinking.