SOCIAL CATEGORIZATION AND THE INFLUENCE OF DRUG INVOLVEMENT ON DRUG ATTITUDE STRUCTURES - IMPLICATIONS FOR ASSESSING DRUG-USE AND TOLERANCEIN THE WORKPLACE

Theories of social categorization were used to generate hypotheses con cerning the impact of drug involvement on the attitudes and knowledge structures that people use in making drug-related judgments. Data indi cated that greater drug exposure tended to foster more complex knowled ge structures for drugs and drug users as revealed by subjects' percep tions of drug users, tolerance for drug use, and perceptions of drug s eriousness. Basically, high drug involvement in terms of personal alco hol use and associating with illicit drug users was related to greater individuation of drug user types. Therefore, high-involved subjects, relative to low-involved individuals, were better able to discriminate between different drug user subtypes and drug user subtypes were more important to high-involved subjects when responding to drug-related s urvey items.