Validation of the English Social Attunement Questionnaire (SAQ): associations with substance use, impulsivity and sensation seeking across the lifespan

Our social environment plays a crucial role in our behavior, including substance use and other impulsive and sensation seeking behaviors. While most research in these fields focus on the role of group pressure and conformity, the importance of social attunement - the tendency to harmonize with and adapt to the social environment to find social reward in the absence of explicit group pressure – has been overlooked. In this study, we assessed the psychometric properties of the English translation of the social attunement questionnaire (SAQ) and assessed how social attunement is associated with age, alcohol use, cannabis use, impulsivity, and sensation seeking (N = 447, 54.5% female). Confirmatory factor analysis showed an acceptable to good fit to the original two-factor structure (RMSEA = .068; CFI = .959; TLI = .947). Internal consistency of the full scale ( = .82), cognition subscale ( = .75) and behavior subscale ( = .78) were sufficient to good, and the SAQ displayed good measurement invariance to sex. Younger individuals displayed higher social attunement, and SAQ scores – guided by the behavior subscale – were positively associated with alcohol and cannabis use, as well as impulsivity. Furthermore, age moderated the association between SAQ scores and alcohol consumption as well as the association between SAQ scores and sensation seeking; while the associations were positive in younger individuals, the associations became more negative with increasing age. These results show that high social attunement might be both a risk and protective factor for the engagement in risk-taking behaviors depending on age.